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SOUTHERN  BRANCH, 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA, 

LIBRARY, 

>LOS  ANGELES.  CALIF. 


TWO  VIEWS  OF  EDUCATION 


TWO  VIEWS  OF  EDUCATION 

WITH  OTHER  PAPERS  CHIEFLY 
ON  THE  STUDY  OF  LITERATURE 


BY 

LANE  COOPER 

Professor  of  the  English  Language  and  Literature 
in  Cornell  University 


476  SI 


NEW  HAVEN 
YALE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

London:  Humphrey  Milfoed,  Oxford  University  Press 
MDCCCCXXII 


Copyright,  1922 
Yale  Univeesity  Press 


PRESS  OF 

TME  NEW  ERA  PRINTINQ  COMPANY 

LANCASTER,  FA. 


V 


1.3 
G79 


PREFACE 

IN  gathering  these  papers  into  a  volume,  I  have 
been  moved  by  three  considerations.  First,  a 
number  of  friends  and  pupils,  including  certain 
teachers  of  English,  would  have  it  so.  Secondly, 
there  has  been  a  demand  for  some  of  the  articles 
from  persons  unknown  to  me,  and  some  of  them  have 
been  handled  as  pamphlets  by  book-shops  in  a  fash- 
ion not  altogether  satisfactory  to  the  dealers  or 
customers,  or  to  the  author.  Thirdly,  I  have  found 
nearly  all  the  contents  of  the  present  volume  useful 
in  my  teaching  at  Cornell  University,  as  well  as  in 
summer  courses  given  at  the  University  of  Illinois, 
Stanford  University,  and  the  University  of  Cali- 
fornia. Meanwhile  the  supply  of  offprints  and 
pamphlets  has  been  virtually  exhausted,  so  that  I 
must  either  reprint  most  of  the  papers,  or  relinquish 
the  hope  of  giving  again  certain  courses  for  teachers 
in  what  seems  to  me  the  most  effective  way.  Per- 
haps it  will  not  be  amiss  to  add  that  I  have  faith  in 
the  eclectic  body  of  doctrine  here  offered  to  a  wider 
public.  The  volume  naturally  represents  my  own 
experience  as  a  student  and  teacher  in  a  special 
province ;  yet  so  much  of  it  is  assimilated  from  writers 
and  thinkers,  teachers  and  scholars,  of  all  ages,  that 
it  may  fairly  be  said  to  represent  a  broader  range 

V 


VI  PREFACE 

of  experience  than  could  fall  to  the  lot  of  any  in- 
dividual; and  hence  I  entertain  the  hope  that  the 
collection  may  be  serviceable  to  others  who  are  inter- 
ested in  the  teaching  of  language  and  literature. 

It  will  be  found  that  these  pages  contain  many, 
and  some  long,  illustrative  quotations,  and  frequent 
citations  of  opinion  on  questions  that  in  recent  years 
have  been  the  subject  of  controversy.  One  entire 
paper,  The  Function  of  the  Leader  in  Scholarship, 
is,  of  set  purpose,  largely  made  up  of  quotations. 
There  and  elsewhere,  it  has  been  my  fortune  to  side 
with  the  few  rather  than  the  multitude,  in  re- 
spect to  the  solution  of  problems  concerning  which 
nearly  every  one  has  fairly  definite  opinions.  In 
fact,  I  have  more  than  once,  after  reading  a  paper 
at  an  educational  gathering,  experienced  an  attack 
upon  what  were  called  my  'ideas,'  when  I  had  taken 
pains  to  let  Milton,  or  Wordsworth,  or  Plato,  or  a 
number  of  such  men  of  weight,  say  for  me  what 
seemed  to  be  unquestionable  truth.  A  great  deal  of 
the  truth  concerning  education  is  unpalatable  to 
any  crowd,  and  I  am  aware  of  no  field  where  the 
truth  is  less  palatable  to  the  generality  than  in  the 
teaching  of  literature.  I  must  therefore  beg  the  in- 
dulgence of  the  reader  for  a  method  of  presentation 
by  which  I  am  enabled  to  Set  forth,  not  my  ideas — 
as  if  ideas  ever  could  be  the  property  of  an  indi- 
vidual— but  permanent  human  ideas,  expressed  with 
the  skill  and  force  of  men  whose  utterances  are 
likely  to  win  assent,  or  at  least  to  receive  attention. 


PEEFACE 


Vll 


The  papers  here  included  have  been  subjected  to 
a  revision  designed  to  eliminate  chance  errors  and 
unnecessary  repetition  of  illustrative  materials,  and, 
so  far  as  might  be,  to  remove  the  signs  of  their  oc- 
casional origin,  together  with  personal  allusions. 
And  something  has  been  done  to  fit  them  into  a 
reasonable  sequence.  That  the  personal  tone  which 
may  be  excused  in  an  occasional  address  has  en- 
tirely disappeared  is  more  than  one  could  hope  for. 
Nor  is  it  to  be  expected  that  the  parts  of  this  book 
should  read  like  the  successive  chapters  of  a  treat- 
ise. If  I  had  tried  to  avoid  all  overlapping,  it 
would  hardly  be  feasible  to  reprint  some  of  the  items 
at  all.  Where  repetition  occurs,  I  trust  that  the 
importance  of  the  thought,  or  at  least  the  strength 
of  my  convictions  as  to  its  importance,  may  serve  as 
aji  excuse  for  what,  after  all,  in  a  systematic  treat- 
ise would  amount  to  little  more  than  a  rhetorical 
device  for  the  sake  of  emphasis. 

It  gives  me  pleasure  to  thank  the  editors  of  the 
various  periodicals  in  which  the  majority  of  these 
articles  first  appeared,  for  permission,  always  gener- 
ously granted,  to  reissue  the  articles  in  their  present 
shape;  these  and  other  obligations  are,  I  trust,  in 
every  case  duly  indicated  at  the  proper  place  in 
the  volume.  But  I  now  subjoin  a  list  of  the  passages 
quoted  with  the  kind  consent  of  the  English  pub- 
lishers from  recent  books  published  in  Great  Britain. 

The  extract  on  pp.  26-7  from  Zielinski's  Oiur  Debt 
to  Antiquity,  pp.  2-3,  is  reprinted  with  the  consent 
of  Messrs.  George  Routledge  and  Sons.  The  extract 
on  p.  83  from  Frederic  Harrison's  Tennyson,  Rus- 


Vlll  PREFACE 

kin,  Mill,  and  other  Literary  Estimates,  pp.  153-4, 
that  on  pp.  83-4  from  Lord  Morley's  Stiidies  in 
Literature,  pp.  222-3,  that  on  p.  133  from  Goldwin 
Smith's  Reminiscences,  p.  71,  and  that  on  pp.  150-2 
from  Welldon's  translation  of  Aristotle's  Rhetoric, 
pp.  164-6,  are  reprinted  with  the  consent  of  Messrs. 
Macmillan  and  Company.  The  extracts  on  pp.  160, 
184-5,  189,  from  Jowett's  translation  of  The  Dia- 
logues of  Plato  1.472-3,  2.124-5,  2.129,  that  on  pp. 
195-6  from  Andrew  Lang's  Memoir  of  W.  Y,  Sellar 
in  Sellar 's  Horace  and  the  Elegiac  Poets,  pp.  xxxi- 
XXXV,  that  on  pp.  212-4  from  Jackson's  translation 
of  Dante's  Convivio,  pp.  31^,  and  that  on  p.  249 
from  Burgon's  Lives  of  Twelve  Good  Men,  p.  38,  are 
reprinted  with  the  consent  of  the  Clarendon  Press. 
The  extract  on  pp.  179-81  from  Andrew  Lang's  Es- 
says in  Little,  pp.  80-3,  is  reprinted  with  the  consent 
of  Messrs.  Longmans,  Green  and  Company,  and  also 
of  Messrs.  Charles  Scribner's  Sons.,  The  extract  on 
pp.  187-8  from  Gierke-Maitland,  Political  Theories 
of  the  Middle  Age,  pp.  131-2,  is  reprinted  with  the 
consent  of  the  Cambridge  University  Press. 

Finally  I  wish  to  thank  two  friends  of  mine,  from 
the  circle  of  my  former  students,  who  have  materi- 
ally helped  me  in  bringing  these  papers  in  their 
present  shape  before  the  public.  But  for  the  gener- 
osity of  these  two  friends  and  pupils  it  would  have 
been  impossible  for  me  to  publish  the  volume  at  all. 
To  them,  since  they  wish  to  remain  anonymous,  I 
herewith  informally  dedicate  the  book. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


I.  Greek   Culture    1 

II.  Ancient  and  Modem  Letters 15 

III.  The  Teaching  of  English  and  the  Study 

of  the  Classics   30 

IV.  Good    Usage   47 

V.  The  Teaching  of  Written  Composition  . .  72 

VI.  The  Correction  of  Papers   88 

VII.  Literature  for  Engineers  105 

VIII.  Teacher  and  Student   128 

IX.  Patterns   145 

X.  Things  New  and  Old 162 

XL  The  Function  of  the  Leader  in  Scholar- 
ship    182 

XII.  Ways  and  Means  of  Improving  Univer- 
sity   Scholarship    219 

XIII.  The  Doctoral  Degree  in  English 249 

XIV.  Two  Views  of  Education  267 

Appendix:     A  Course  in  Translations  of 

the  Classics  294 

Index    309 


IX 


>. 


GREEK  CULTURE^ 

SINCE  the  following  pages  often  lay  stress  on 
the  importance  of  the  ancient  classics  in  a 
general  education,  it  may  be  well  to  begin  with  a 
brief  estimate  of  Greek  antiquity,  and  some  hints 
respecting  our  debt  to  it. 

The  term  'Greek  culture'  properly  embraces  all 
the  activities  of  the  Hellenic  race  throughout  all 
ages,  with  the  influence  of  the  Greeks  upon  other 
peoples  and  civilizations.  A  rapid  survey  can  in- 
clude only  what  is  typical  of  the  best  periods,  to- 
gether with  a  few  aspects  of  Greek  tradition  and  in- 
fluence. 

Fifty  years  ago,  Greek  civilization  seemed  an  in- 
explicable phenomenon,  conditioned,  indeed,  by  the 
geography  and  climate  of  the  eastern  Mediterranean, 
yet  not  derivative  in  the  usual  sense,  since  the  early 
culture  of  Egypt  and  Asia  Minor  could  not  account 
for  it,  while  to  Thrace  the  Greek  owed  little  more 
than  an  earnest  desire  to  escape  from  Thracian  bar- 
barism. Of  late,  however,  we  have  become  aware  of 
a  vast  pre-existent  ^gean  culture,  not  only  having 

*  This  article  (save  for  the  opening  paragraph)  is  taken  from 
the  1919  edition  of  the  Encyclopedia  Americana  13,  384-387, 
with  the  kind  permission  of  the  editor-in-chief;  I  have  utilized 
the  opportunity  for  revision  by  modifying  a  veiy  few  statements. 


2  GREEK  CULTUEE 

centres  at  Argos,  JMycense,  and  Orchomenos,  and  in 
the  Troad  and  Crete,  but  extending  from  the  Archi- 
pelago to  Syria  and  other  distant  shores  of  the 
Mediterranean.  Archaeology  has  pushed  back  the 
origins  of  Hellenic  culture  six  thousand  years  or 
more;  and  if  it  does  not  explain  the  Greek  genius 
and  Greek  art  (since  in  art  and  genius  there  is  always 
something  that  defies  analysis),  yet,  by  affording 
glimpses  of  age-long  preparation,  it  satisfies  the  mind 
that  is  accustomed  to  the  notion  of  simple  origins 
and  a  process  of  evolution.  Even  so,  in  contemplat- 
ing the  efforts  of  the  Greek  genius,  we  should  doubt- 
less suspect  the  bias  of  our  day,  and  be  ready  to 
credit  more  rather  than  less  to  the  originating  power 
of  grea,t  individuals,  and  to  the  mutual  inspiration 
of  gifted  men  in  groups,  as  compared  with  the  vague 
effect  upon  them  of  the  masses. 

Explain  the  origins  as  we  may,  two  periods  stand 
out  pre-eminent  in  Hellenic  civilization :  the  Homeric 
age,  from  the  tenth  to  the  eighth  century  B.C.;  and 
the  age  associated  with  the  name  of  Pericles,  an 
interval  of  100  years  or  so,  beginning  about  480  b.c. 
To  these  we  must  add  the  less  creative,  more  scien- 
tific and  critical,  Hellenistic  age,  including  the  third 
and  second  centuries  B.C. 

The  Homeric  Iliad  and  Odyssey  represent  the 
flower  of  early  Hellenic  culture.  They  were  not,  as 
Lord  Macaulay  thought,  the  outcome  of  heroic  bar- 
barism ;  certainly  they  evince  no  unsophisticated  art. 
Rather  they  seem  to  have  appeared  near  the  end  of 
a  high  stage  of  civilization,  possibly  as  it  began  to 


THE  ILIAD  AND  THE  ODYSSEY  3 

decline;  though  they  idealize  the  life  of  a  more 
heroic  past.  As  to  their  origin,  modern  scholarship 
is  now  veering  again  toward  the  ancient  belief  in 
the  existence  of  a  great  poet  who  may  have  organized 
earlier  materials  into  the  two  masterly  epics.  True, 
there  is  in  the  Odyssey  a  difference  in  tone  which 
led  Longinus  (or  whoever  wrote  the  treatise  On  the 
Sublime)  to  ascribe  this  poem  to  the  old  age  of  the 
author ;  and  there  are  grounds  for  believing,  not  only 
that  the  Iliad  is  a  more  primitive  work,  but  that 
more  than  one  hand  may  have  been  concerned  in 
giving  it  the  form  it  now  possesses.  But  in  any  case 
the  Iliad,  and  still  more  the  Odyssey,  betray  a  wonder- 
ful command  of  metrical  composition,  a  vast  knowl- 
edge of  history,  geography,  tradition,  and  myth,  ex- 
tra,ordinary  insight  into  the  ways  and  motives  of 
men,  and  an  ability  to  unite  all  these  poetical  re- 
sources into  a  single  plot  for  the  attainment  of  a 
designed  artistic  end.  In  structure  the  Odyssey  is 
more  perfect  than  most  of  the  dramas  of  Shakespeare 
and  the  works  of  virtually  all  modern  novelists. 
Such  an  art  no  doubt  is  unthinkable  in  a  poet  work- 
ing in  isolation,  without  predecessors  to  learn  from, 
and  contemporaries  to  inspire  and  appreciate  him. 
Accordingly,  we  must  imagine  a  school  of  ^gean 
bards  who  gave  rise  to  at  least  one  superlative 
genius':  Homerus,  *he  who  sews  together' — a  maker 
or  fitter,  not  merely  of  verses,  but  of  characters  and 
incidents  into  one  orderly  plan  with  a  beginning, 
middle,  and  end.  The  final  measure  of  Homeric  civi- 
lization is   the   poetic   art  to  be  seen   in  the  two 


4  GEEEK  CULTUEE 

epics,  from  which,  centuries  after,  the  Aristotelian 
theory  of  poetry  was  largely  deduced.  But  we  have 
evidence  also  that  the  Homeric  age  possessed  a 
noble  architecture,  knew  the  art  of  writing,  was 
skilled  in  weaving  tapestry,  was  expert  in  metal- 
work  and  woodwork,  understood  landscape  garden- 
ing and  road-making  as  well  as  sculpture,  and  had 
developed  a  seemingly  naive,  but  very  subtle,  elo- 
quence. To  judge  from  its  two  great  epics,  the  age 
was  benevolent  toward  religious  tradition;  not  athe- 
istical, but  employing  the  tales  of  the  gods  in  no  very 
edifying  way.  The  Olympians  are  brought  down 
not  quite  to  the  level  of  the  heroes,  while  the  heroes 
are  elevated  until,  in  conduct  if  not  in  power,  they 
move  on  a  plane  not  much  lower  than  the  gods  as 
agents  in  the  story.  More  important  than  all  else, 
then,  the  Homeric  age  transmitted  to  that  of  Peri- 
cles ideals  of  human  conduct — bravery  and  endur- 
ance in  time  of  war,  good  counsel  and  fidelity  in  time 
of  peace ;  at  all  times  courage  for  individual  achieve- 
ment, coupled  with  reverence  and  an  instinctive 
feeling  that  communal  interests  are  supreme. 

The  age  of  Pericles  is  justly  regarded  as  attain- 
ing the  high-water  mark  of  Greek  culture.  At  this 
time  Athens  became  the  chief  city  of  Greece  and  the 
centre  of  Mediterranean  civilization.  Here  the  vari- 
ous excellences  of  the  several  Hellenic  stocks,  Doric, 
^.olic,  and  Ionic,  were  tempered  and  united  in  one 
superior  blend  of  character.  Here  the  streams  of 
dialect  merged  into  one  clear,  vigorous,  and  beauti- 
ful medium  of  expression,  the  Attic.    Here  the  sys- 


ALL  STREAMS  UNITE  AT  ATHENS       5 

terns  of  philosophy  which  had  arisen  in  Asia  Minor 
and  in  Sicily  and  southern  Italy  were  sifted  and  in- 
corporated into  the  native  systems  of  Socrates,  Plato, 
and  Aristotle.  Here  the  Sicilian  theory  and  practice 
of  rhetoric  matured  into  perfect  eloquence.  Here 
was  developed  tragedy;  hither  came  comedy  from 
Syracuse.  Here  the  Homeric  poems  were  learned 
by  heart  as  the  one  basic  element  of  education;  and 
tragedies  founded  upon  stories  from  the  great  epic 
tradition  became  familiar  to  a  populace,  large  num- 
bers of  whom  in  course  of  time  took  part  in  the 
choruses.  In  this  period,  Athenian  life  was  charac- 
terized by  the  dominance  of  a  regulated  imagination 
in  every  sphere  of  activity,  and  by  a  complete  inter- 
penetration  of  theory  and  practice.  Imagination, 
hand  in  hand  with  reason,  appeared  in  the  ordering 
of  the  State,  in  the  development  of  commerce  and 
colonies,  in  the  public  festivals  and  religion,  in  the 
consummation  of  every  fine  and  every  useful  art. 
In  fact,  the  distinction  between  fine  and  useful  art 
was  not  observed,  so  that  even  the  commonest  uten- 
sils became  objects  of  beauty,  to  be  wondered  at  by 
subsequent  ages.  For  the  simultaneous  flourishing 
of  sculpture,  painting,  architecture,  music,  and  poetry, 
no  other  age  can  be  compared  with  this,  unless,  per- 
haps, the  thirteenth  century  of  our  era  in  France  and 
Italy.  But  in  Greece  the  arts  subsisted  in  closer 
combination  with  each  other,  with  the  functions  of 
the  State,  with  religion,  and  with  life.  Witness  At- 
tic tragedy  and  comedy,  which  arose  in  the  worship 
of  Dionysus,  and  were  associated  with  the  chief  re- 
2 


6  GREEK  CULTURE  ' 

ligious  festivals  and  processions;  were  exhibited  in 
a  theatre  which  was  virtually  a  temple  of  the  god, 
a  masterpiece  of  architecture  in  marble,  capable  of 
holding  a  large  share  of  the  free  populace  at  once; 
were  supported  by  a  State  that  supplied  every  citi- 
zen with  the  price  of  admission;  were  produced  by 
poets  who  took  part  in  the  acting,  as  well  as  in  train- 
ing the  actors  and  chorus,  and  who  were  eligible  to 
any  office  in  the  democracy  (as  Sophocles  was  ap- 
pointed one  of  the  ten  generals  who  led  the  expedi- 
tion against  the  revolt  in  Samos)  ;  were  attended  by 
strangers  from  every  part  of  Greece,  serving  to  unify 
the  Hellenic  consciousness;  and  in  fact  combined  in 
one  our  modern  drama,  opera,  dancing,  and  lyrical 
poetry,  with  the  embellishments  of  the  best  landscape- 
painting  and  artistic  costume. 

But  Greek  civilization  was  something  more  than 
what  the  Greeks  actually  accomplished,  in  art,  or  in 
commerce,  or  in  statesmanship.  The  creator  is 
greater  than  his  works.  More  important  than  what 
they  wrought  were  the  agents,  the  men  themselves, 
with  their  ability  to  produce  both  these  and  other 
works — with  their  unlimited  capacity  for  contempla- 
tion and  construction,  for  the  highest  kind  of  action, 
the  orderly  life  of  the  spirit.  Greek  civilization 
means  Phidias  and  Praxiteles,  the  sculptors,  rather 
than  the  small  part  of  their  work  now  remaining. 
It  means  Ictinus  and  Polygnotus,  the  architect  and 
the  painter;  Socrates,  Anaxagoras,  and  Plato,  the 
philosophers;  Pindar,  the  lyric  poet;  Herodotus  and 
Thucydides,  the  historians;  Demosthenes,  the  orator; 


PERICLES  AND  SOPHOCLES  7 

Aristophanes,  the  comic  poet,  prince  in  the  realm  of 
mirth  and  fantastic  beauty;  JE.schylus,  Sophocles, 
and  Euripides,  the  masters  of  tragedy ;  and  Pericles, 
the  statesman,  the  artist  and  philosopher  in  govern- 
ment. There  were  also  strange,  indecent  men,  like 
Diogenes;  and  bad  or  irresponsible  men,  like  Alcibi- 
ades  and  Cleon.  Yet  on  the  whole  the  Athenians, 
nobly  simple,  and  quietly  great,  maintained  a  norm 
of  good  and  beautiful  conduct,  observing  measure 
in  all  things,  even  while  devoting  themselves  each 
to  his  chosen  way  of  life  and  communal  service;  for 
the  life  of  the  individual  was  subordinated  to  the 
welfare  of  the  State,  and  found  complete  realization 
therein — the  State  did  not,  as  in  modem  times, 
mainly  exist  for  the  sake  of  the  individual. 

From  this  wonderful  group  and  succession  of 
gifted  and  cultivated  men,  whose  activities  really 
constituted  the  essence  of  Greek  civilization,  it  is 
customary,  following  the  example  of  Plutarch,  to 
single  out  Pericles,  leader  and  conserver  of  the 
Athenian  polity,  as  the  representative  citizen,  and 
the  type  of  Hellenic  culture.  Grave  and  reserved, 
fearless  and  eloquent,  combining  judgment  with  im- 
agination, intelligence  with  sentiment,  forethought 
with  passion,  of  commanding  presence,  endowed,  as 
it  seemed  to  his  fellows,  with  every  physical  excel- 
lence and  power  of  mind,  and  possessed  of  the  good 
breeding  which  is  the  crown  of  virtue,  he  might 
well  have  sat  for  the  character-sketch  of  the  'high- 
minded  man'  that  is  drawn  by  Aristotle  in  the 
Nicomachean  Ethics.    But  for  our  purposes  of  illus- 


8  GEEEK  CULTUEE 

tration,  the  magnanimous  Sophocles  may  serve  even 
better.  For,  first,  he  is  a  poet,  or  'maker,'  par  ex- 
cellence; and  examples  of  his  work  are  still  intact, 
while  the  Periclean  State  came  to  a  sudden  termina- 
tion. And  secondly,  it  is  easier  to  compare  him  with 
other  typical  Greeks,  since  he  occupies  the  place  of 
a  golden  mean  betwixt  the  religious  ^^chylus,  who 
'did  right'  as  a  dramatist  'without  knowing  why,' 
and  the  rationalist  and  realist,  Euripides,  who  drew 
men  'as  they  are';  whereas  Sophocles,  as  he  himself 
was  aware,  proceeded  aright  from  correct  principles 
of  art  as  well  as  correct  sentiments,  and,  observing 
men  and  human  life  even  more  truly  than  Euripides, 
nevertheless  properly  idealized  his  characters  for 
the  ends  of  tragic  representation.  As  in  his  own 
well-ordered  life,  so  in  elaborating  his  dramas,  and 
in  the  very  process  of  displaying  the  misfortunes  of 
a  self-blinded  CEdipus,  he  shows  how  the  artistic 
regulation  of  impulse  leads  to  success  and  happiness. 
Nor  did  his  fellow-Athenians  blunder  in  their  esti- 
mate of  him,  for  in  the  dramatic  contests  he  secured 
first  prize  no  fewer  than  twenty  times.  Moreover, 
in  the  comedy  of  the  Frogs,  Aristophanes,  with  his 
keen  eye  for  disproportion,  ridicules  ^schylus  some- 
what, and  Euripides  yet  more,  for*  departing  on  this 
side  or  that  from  the  golden  mean,  while  he  signifi- 
cantly refrains  from  attempting  to  distort  the  work 
of  Sophocles. 

As  a  typical  Greek,  Sophocles  is  religious;  not, 
like  the  Athenians  in  their  later  decadence,  'too  re- 
ligious,' as  Saint  Paul  described  them.     He  is  also 


THE  TYPICAL  GEEEK  9 

many-sided,  with  a  number  of  diverse  faculties  reiady 
for  the  accomplishment  of  both  his  immediate  and 
his  final  aim.  But  the  unity  and  compactness  of 
structure  in  his  (Edipus  Rex  or  his  Antigone  reflect 
the  inner  unity  of  spirit  in  their  author.  Sophocles 
knows  when  to  amplify  and  when  to  inhibit;  he  is 
equally  sensitive  to  broad  perspective  and  to  the 
value  of  each  detail.  His  vision  is  steady  and  com- 
prehensive, as  a  comparison  of  the  eighth  Psalm,  in 
the  Bible,  with  his  chorus  on  man,  in  the  Antigone, 
will  disclose.  He  has  formed  a  just  estimate  of  the 
relation  between  external  nature,  mankind,  and  the 
divine.  In  the  delineation  of  character  he  has  never 
been  surpassed,  yet  his  plays  do  not,  like  those  of 
Shakespeare,  fail  to  take  direct  cognizance  of  the 
action  of  a  higher  divine  power  (something  more 
than  impersonal  moral  law)  in  the  affairs  of  men. 

But  the  typical  Greek  has  his  limitations.  Although 
Homer  and  Sophocles  have  a  sense  of  the  divine  in 
relation  to  human  life,  they  are  both  polytheistic. 
Though  in  both  we  find  ideal  relations  between  men 
and  women  represented  or  suggested,  and  though 
Athens  and  the  Parthenon  by  their  very  names  imply 
a  lofty  conception  of  womanhood,  Greek  society  was 
disfigured  by  an  attitude  to  homosexual  impulse  that 
often  resulted  in  words  and  actions  at  once  base  and 
grotesque;  nor  should  one  forget  that  the  leisure  of 
cultivated  men  was  made  possible  by  the  labor  of 
slaves.  And  though  both  of  these  poets  attribute 
human  failure  to  human  blindness  of  heart  rather 
than  to  fate  or  divine  prejudice,  the  Greeks  did  not 


10  GREEK  CULTURE 

in  the  main  identify  divine  providence  with  divine 
good  will,  ^sehylus,  it  is  true,  may  almost  be 
termed  monotheistic;  and  Plato  has  been  called  by 
the  Jews  themselves  the  Greek  Moses,  as  by  English 
scholars  he  has  on  occasion  been  styled  a  Puritan. 
But  -lEschylus  said  that  his  plays  were  only  morsels 
from  the  Homeric  banquet;  while  Plato,  in  spite  of 
the  criticism  passed  on  the  ancient  epic  poems  in  the 
Republic,  is  heavily  indebted  to  them,  and,  closely 
as  he  approaches  Hebraism  or  the  modern  spirit  in 
his  deepest  reflections,  he  still  remains  a  pagan.  It 
was  left  for  the  Hebrews  and  Christianity  definitely 
to  assert  a  pure  monotheism  for  transmission  to 
modem  times;  to  develop  the  idea  of  the  fatherhood 
of  God;  and  thus  to  establish  upon  a  firm  founda- 
tion the  principles  governing  the  relations  between 
men  and  women,  women  and  women,  men  and  men. 
Again,  the  joyous  Greek  was  not  the  joj^ul  Chris- 
tiaai';  nor  was  death  to  him  the  beginning  of  life — 
the  'cross'  of  the  Stoics  takes  on  a  new  meaning  in 
Saint  Paul.  And  again,  the  mediaeval  doctrine  of 
'the  gentle  heart,'  from  which  our  modem  concep- 
tions of  lady  and  gentleman  are  mainly  derived,  was 
neither  Greek  nor  Roman.  "While  these  conceptions 
owe  much  to  classical  antiquity,  to  the  Homeric  and 
tragic  heroes  and  heroines,  to  the  'highminded  man' 
of  Aristotle  and  the  refined  orator  of  Aristotle, 
Cicero,  and  Quintilian,  to  the  Virgilian  ^neas  (who 
was  borrowed  from,  the  Greeks),  they  owe  more  to 
the  Provencal  and  Italian,  and  to  the  Germanic  and 
Celtic,  attitude  to  woman;  at  the  core  they  are 
Christian. 


HOW  GREEK  CULTURE  HAS  SURVIVED     H 

The  Greek  culture  of  the  most  vital  period  has 
been  handed  down  to  us  by  intervening  civilizations. 
Even  the  Hellenistic  age  may  almost  be  regarded  as 
intermediary  and  transitional;  though  under  the  in- 
fluence of  Aristotle  there  came  not  only  a  critical 
evaluation  of  what  preceded  him  in  the  way  of 
rhetoric,  political  science,  and  poetry,  but  new  de- 
velopments of  both  moral  and  physical  and  biologi- 
cal science.  In  Theophrastus  we  have  the  father  of 
botany;  in  Euclid,  the  founder  of  modem  mathe- 
matics; in  Eratosthenes,  the  beginnings  of  modern 
scholarship.  From  Athens  Greek  culture  passed  to 
Alexandria,  and  from  Alexandria  to  Rome.  Grasco- 
Roman  culture  was  succeeded  and  preserved  by  that 
of  Byzantium,  and  then,  during  the  decay  of  learn- 
ing in  southern  Europe,  was  preserved  in  Ireland 
and  England  and  in  Arabia  and  Syria,  whence  it 
returned  to  the  Continent  in  the  later  Middle  Ages. 
It  has  on  three  occasions  reasserted  itself  with  special 
force :  at  Rome  under  the  Emperor  Hadrian ;  in  the 
thirteenth  century — for  example,  in  the  scholastic 
philosophers  and  Dante;  and  again  in  all  Europe 
beginning  with  the  Italian  Renaissance,  this  last, 
however,  being  mainly  Latin  in  character,  and  but 
secondarily  Greek.  Still,  if  we  regard  the  Renais- 
sance as  extending  to  our  own  day,  we  find  a  better 
and  better  understanding  and  assimilation  of  Hel- 
lenism, until  in  poets  like  Shelley  and  Goethe  we 
discover  an  approximation  to  the  Greek  spirit  almost 
as  close  as  that  achieved  at  Rome  by  Cicero,  Virgil, 
and  Horace.    All  five  are,  so  to  speak,  not  Greeks 


12  GREEK  CULTUEE 

proper  of  the  triumphant  age,  but,  like  Lucian  and 
Plutarch,  late  and  provincial  imitators — who  never- 
theless have  in  them  something  of  the  original  Hel- 
lenic genius.  But  perhaps,  in  their  respective  arts, 
Raphael  and  Mozart  more  truly  reveal  it,  working 
freely  in  the  classical  spirit,  and  yet  escaping  any 
domination  by  particular  models  since  the  music 
and  painting  of  Athens  are  lost. 

"What  has  Greek  culture  done  for  the  world?  The 
enthusiastic  Shelley  (writing  in  the  year  1822)  ex- 
claims : 

'We  are  all  Greeks.  Our  laws,  our  literature,  our 
religion,  our  arts,  have  their  root  in  Greece.  But 
for  Greece,  Rome — the  instructor,  the  conqueror,  or 
the  metropolis  of  our  ancestors — would  have  spread 
no  illumination  with  her  arms,  and  we  might  still 
have  been  savages  and  idolaters;  or,  what  is  worse, 
might  have  arrived  at  such  a  stagnant  and  miserable 
state  of  social  institution  as  China  and  Japan  pos- 
S'ess. '  ^ 

If  pressed,  Shelley  would  have  to  admit  that  Euro- 
pean law  was  the  invention  of  Rome;  and  that,  so 
far  as  concerns  religion,  the  function  of  the  Greeks 
under  the  Roman  Empire  was  that  of  formulating 
and  transmitting,  not  of  producing  it.  Moreover,  the 
principle  of  government  by  elected  deputies  comes 
to  us,  not  from  antiquity,  but  from  the  mediaeval 
monasteries.  The  Christian  liturgy,  however,  though 
based  upon  Hebraic  forms,  may  have  originated 
among  Christian  Greeks;  ecclesiastical  music  is  es- 

*  Preface  to  Hellas. 


GREEK  LITERAEY  TYPES  13 

sentially  Greek;  the  most  original  literary  efforts  of 
the  early  Christian  era,  the  hymns,  were  composed, 
some  in  Greek,  and  some  in  Latin;  and  the  New 
Testament  was  written  in  the  commercial  Greek 
(adapted)  that  had  spread  after  the  supremacy  of 
Athens,  and  was  the  general  means  of  communica- 
tion for  the  eastern  Mediterranean.  For  all  that,  the 
customary  attribution  of  intellectual  culture  to  the 
Greeks,  and  religious  culture  to  the  Hebrews,  is  in 
the  main  justified,  if  we  remember  that  the  differ- 
ence between  the  two  races  is  one  of  degree  and 
emphasis  rather  than  kind,  that  the  Greeks  were  not 
unreligious,  nor  the  Hebrews  unintellectual.  Strictly 
considered,  the  gifts  of  the  two  races  to  civilization 
cannot  be  regarded  apart.  Thus,  as  Renan  points 
out,  the  Hebrews  discovered  various  literary  types 
as  well  as  the  Greeks.  And  yet  we  are  safe  in  deem- 
ing the  main  literary  types,  and,  as  Shelley  says, 
the  arts  in  general,  a  bequest  of  the  Greeks  to  the 
world.  It  was  they  who  provided  the  models  which 
have  aroused  the  enthusiasm  of  mankind:  for  the 
epic  and  mock-epic,  the  poems  of  Homer ;  for  tragedy, 
iEschylus  and  Sophocles;  for  romantic  tragedy  and 
tragi-comedy,  Euripides;  for  political  comedy,  Aris- 
tophanes; for  the  character-sketch,  the  rhetoricians 
and  Theophrastus ;  for  domestic  comedy,  Menander; 
for  history,  Herodotus  and  Thucydides ;  for  the  dia- 
logue, Plato ;  for  the  oration,  Demosthenes ;  for  lyri- 
cal poetry,  Pindar;  for  pastoral,  Theocritus.  From 
the  Platonic  dialogue,  through  Seneca,  came  the  es- 
say.   The  satire,  so  far  as  we  know,  was  another  in- 


14  GEEEK  CULTUEE 

vention  of  Rome.  But  what  is  often  thought  to  be 
the  peculiar  type  of  modem  literature,  the  prose 
novel,  nevertheless  has  its  prototypes  in  the  last  pro- 
ductions of  the  Greek  genius,  the  romances  of  Helio- 
dorus,  Achilles  Tatius,  and  Longus.  Even  our  scien- 
tific monographs,  and  the  various  types  of  literary 
criticism,  in  verse  as  well  as  prose,  go  back  to  Aris- 
totle and  to  his  successors  at  Alexandria.  They  who 
speak  slightingly  of  Hellenistic  and  'Alexandrian' 
scholarship  and  science  know  little  of  the  matter. 

In  the  main,  Greek  art  has  given  us  a  conception 
of  orderly  structure,  when  we  have  been  willing  to 
accept  it,  pervading  all  human  activity  and  achieve- 
ment. The  Greek,  in  his  city-state  built  upon  a  hill, 
developed  a  sense  for  architecture  which  reappears 
in  every  other  art,  and  in  all  domains  of  life.  The 
words  and  sentences  of  his  oration  or  his  drama  are 
arranged  like  the  stones  in  each  section  of  his  citadel 
and  hill-crowning  temple,  and  the  several  parts  are 
fitted  together  in  order  due,  like  the  face  and  divi- 
sions of  the  Parthenon.  The  nomadic  Hebrew  origi- 
nally dwelt  in  tents  under  the  stars  of  the  desert. 
His  architectonic  sense  is  relatively  weak.  But  his 
Psalms  have  expressed  the  grief  and  exultation  of 
mankind ;  it  is  he  who  gave  the  final  meaning  to  the 
Greek  Logos,  the  "Word  incarnate  and  undying ;  and 
the  Greek  words  Christ  and  Christian  take  us  back 
not  only  to  Rome  and  Greece,  but,  through  Rome  and 
Greece,  to  Palestine.  In  any  case  they  lead  us  to 
the  Mediterranean  sources  of  all  modern  civilization. 


II 

ANCIENT  AND  MODERN  LETTERS ' 

PHI  BETA  KAPPA  is  a  'Greek-letter'  society. 
Beta  and  Kappa,  B  and  K,  the  second  two 
constituents  of  its  usual  name,  are  found  in  what 
we  call  the  Roman  alphabet  also,  and  hence  in  the 
English.  But  the  first,  the  letter  $,  is  not ;  nor  may 
the  concept  which  Phi  here  represents,  that  is,  phil- 
osophia,  be  perfectly  understood  by  those  who  never 
have  received  a  direct  and  literal  message  from  the 
Greeks. 

Were  it  feasible  to  discuss  at  length  the  history  of 
the  separate  words,  'Philosophy,  the  Guide  of  Life,' 
in  which  we  render  the  noble  motto,  <I>iXocro<^ta 
jStov  Kv^€pvr]Tr)<;,  it  would  not  be  difficult  to  show  how 
the  phrase  suggests  an  essential  unity  in  all  the  di- 
versity of  ancient,  mediaeval,  and  modern  culture. 
The  words  'guide'  and  'life'  do,  indeed,  take  on  a 
different  coloring  when  translated  into  other  tongues, 
and  interpreted  for  different  stages  of  civilization : 
La  Philosophie,  la  Regie  de  la  Vie;  Die  Fhilosophie, 

*  The  substance  of  a  presidential  address  to  the  New  York 
Theta  Chapter  of  Phi  Beta  Kappa  at  Cornell  University,  deliv- 
ered after  the  initiation  of  new  members,  April  1,  1912.  The 
address  was  first  published  in  the  South  Atlantic  Quarterly  11. 
234-243  (July,  1912),  and  is  reprinted  with  the  kind  permission 
of  the  editor. 

15 


16  ANCIENT  AND  MODERN  LETTERS 

der  Leitstern  des  Lebens.  French,  and  German,  and 
English  life  at  least  have  a  very  different  outward 
appearance,  as  have  different  epochs  in  the  life  and 
thought  of  any  one  nation.  The  resemblances  be- 
tween French  thought  in  Abelard  of  the  twelfth 
centurj',  for  example,  and  French  thought  in  Loisy 
of  the  twentieth,  are  not  wholly  on  the  surface.  Yet 
in  every  age,  in  the  principal  modem  tongues,  and 
to  the  most  modern,  who  are  often  the  most  conserva- 
tive, of  their  times,  the  word  'philosophy'  must  re- 
main essentially  unchanged,  and  essentially  Greek. 

The  Society  was  organized  in  the  first  year  of  our 
national  independence,  at  a  time  when  the  study  of 
Greek  and  Latin  authors  was  felt  to  be  indispen- 
sable to  the  cultivation  of  philosophy  and  the  study 
of  belles-lettres  in  general — 'beautiful  letters,'  as 
the  French  so  well  express  it.  Subsequently  there 
has  intervened  a  brief  space — brief,  that  is,  in  the 
perspective  of  the  centuries,  and  even  in  the  history 
of  our  own  nation — during  which  certain  alleged 
exponents  and  purveyors  of  culture  have  seemed  to 
feel  otherwise.  At  all  events  we  have  beheld  osten- 
sible leaders  of  education,  themselves  sometimes  ow- 
ing the  best  tha.t  was  in  them  to  the  study  of  Greek, 
yet  acting  as  if  they  fancied  that  the  contemplation 
of  less  beautiful  letters  might  embellish  the  souls  of 
our  American  youth  quite  as  well  as  the  most  excel- 
lent letters  of  all — namely,  those  most  excellent 
letters  in  which  the  Homeric  poems,  the  tragedies 
of  Sophocles,  the  dialogues  of  Plato,  and  the  books 
of  the  New  Testament  have  come  down  to  us.    These 


THE  GEEEK  VIEW  OF  SELF-DENIAL  17 

intervenient  guides  have  axgued,  in  effect,  that  any 
kind  of  mental  pabulum  is  wholesome  for  a  man,  so 
long  as  he  craves  it;  that  one  subject  is  just  about 
as  good  as  another  in  the  curriculum,  so  long  as  no 
sneering  demagogue  has  labeled  it  '  aristocratic ' ;  and 
that  the  main  principle  in  a  general  education  uo 
longer  is,  'Let  a  man  deny  himself,  and  take  up  his 
cross  daily,'  but,  'Let  every  man  follow  his  bent.' 
Yes,  and  on  the  same  principle  let  the  nation  follow 
its  bent,  disregarding  that  piece  of  counsel  in  the 
Nicomachean  Ethics  of  Aristotle:  'We  must  also 
observe  the  extremes  toward  which  we  ourselves  are 
specially  prone,  for  different  natures  have  different 
bents;  and  we  can  ascertain  our  natural  tendencies 
by  a  consideration  of  our  feelings  of  pleasure  and 
pain.  And  we  must  drag  ourselves  in  the  direction 
opposite  to  our  bent .  .  .  as  we  do  when  we  straighten 
warped  timbers. '  ^  Under  the  elective  system  in 
studies,  the  drift  of  the  nation,  as  of  individuals,  led 
away  from  Greek,  and  for  many  reasons;  the  chief 
one  being  that  Greek,  like  mathematics,  is  hard — it 
brings  students  to  a  consideration  of  their  feelings 
of  pain, — while,  unlike  a  part  of  the  mathematics, 
it  has  little  obvious  bearing  upon  the  production  and 
distribution  of  animal  comforts  and  necessities.  Yet 
there  is  reason  to  believe  that  the  evil  time  of  lost 
distinctions  and  educational  anarchy  in  America  is 
past,  or  passing ;  that  Greek,  for  example,  was  in  its 
greatest  peril  about  the  beginning  of  the  present 
century;  that  signs  now  point  to  its  coming  rehabili- 

*  Nicomachean  Ethics,  Book  2,  chap.  9. 


18  ANCIENT  AND  MODERN  LETTERS 

tation ;  and  that  not  a  few  persons  whom  it  formerly 
nourished,  who  latterly  have  been  faint-hearted  or 
treacherous  in  its  defence,  are  ready  to  join  in  the 
acclamation  when  the  subject  once  more  comes  to 
its  own. 

In  this  rehabilitation,  it  is  safe  to  predict,  the 
teachers  of  the  modern  literatures,  and  in  particular 
the  teachers  of  English,  will  ultimately  be  found  to 
have  exercised  a  decided  influence.  It  may  not  be 
improper  to  say  that  I  yield  to  none  in  the  venera- 
tion of  my  own  subject,  the  English  language  and 
literature.  I  will  even  venture  to  affirm  that  the 
man  who  teaches  his  own  vernacular  has,  with  cer- 
tain manifest  disadvantages,  certain  paramount  ad- 
vantages in  the  general  culture  of  his  students  over 
the  teacher  of  any  foreign  literature,  whether  an- 
cient or  modern;  nay  more,  that  certain  advantages 
can  accrue  to  the  pupil  only  on  the  condition  that 
his  teacher  shall  approach  the  ancient  or  foreign 
literature  through  the  vernacular.  If  this  be  granted, 
there  will  be  less  danger  of  misunderstanding  when 
we  add  that  it  is  a  most  pernicious  error  to  assume 
that  one  subject,  considered  in  itself,  is  as  impor- 
tant as  another  in  a  general  scheme  of  studies.  Prop- 
erly considered,  English  literature,  the  most  signifi- 
cant of  modern  literatures  unless  it  be  the  Italian, 
is  a  very  feeble  instrument  of  education  indeed  as 
compared  with  the  ancient  classics,  if  it  be  dissoci- 
ated from  them ;  and  if  a  severance  were  necessary 
between  the  ancient  and  modem,  the  modem  had 
better  be  dropped  from  the  curriculum,  and  the 
ancient,  above  all  the  Greek,  retained. 


FUNDAMENTAL  STUDIES  19 

Of  course  there  is  at  present  no  likelihood  that 
such  a  mischance  will  occur.  What  seems  probable 
is  that  the  teachers  of  modern  languages  will  more 
and  more  clearly  recognize  the  futility  of  pursuing 
their  respective  subjects,  French,  German,  Italian, 
English,  with  students  who  are  ignorant  of  Greek 
and  Latin.  They  will  more  and  more  insistently 
demand  that  what  is  fundamental,  what  precedes 
in  point  of  logic  as  well  as  time,  shall  be  acquired 
by  students  before  they  approach  the  special  investi- 
gation of  a  modern  literature.  In  fact,  during  the 
past  few  decades,  while  Greek  may  have  seemed  to 
be  losing  ground,  and  Latin  perhaps  not  to  be  gain- 
ing, eminent  professors  of  English  have  been  send- 
ing out  of  our  American  universities  a  succession  of 
young  doctors  of  pliilosophy  convinced  that  the  hope 
of  the  classics  is  the  hope  of  any  thorough  general 
culture,  and  that  the  cause  of  English  will  stand  or 
fall  with  that  of  Greek  and  Latin.  What  these  emi- 
nent teachers  of  English  have  been  doing,  the  emi- 
nent teachers  of  other  modern  literatures  have  like- 
wise been  doing,  with  the  result  that  we  possess  in 
the  best-trained  younger  men  and  women  in  some  of 
the  more  popular  subjects  of  instruction  a  growing 
influence  in  favor  of  the  classics,  to  be  added  to  the 
persistent  influence  of  classical  scholars  themselves. 

It  would  be  impossible  to  explain  in  brief  the 
cogent  reasons  that  move  these  teachers  of  modem 
literature  in  their  effort  to  direct  the  younger  gener- 
ation betimes  into  the  study  of  Greek  and  Latin; 
yet  a  few  reflections  upon  the  relation  of  our  own 
literature  to  the  classics  may  be  suggestive. 


20  ANCIENT  AND  MODERN  LETTERS 

It  will  doubtless  be  granted  that  the  first  requisite 
in  understanding  a  poem  in  any  language  is  a  meas- 
ure of  sympathy  with  the  author.  The  reader  must 
have  had  certain  experiences  in  common  with  the 
poet.  Now,  with  exceptions  so  rare  as  to  be  negli- 
gible, the  English  poets,  beginning  with  Cynewulf, 
Chaucer,  Spenser,  Shakespeare,  and  Milton,  and  in- 
cluding Wordsworth,  Tennyson,  and  Browning,  have 
had  the  common  experience  of  reading  Latin — every 
one  of  these,  for  example,  knew  Virgil;  and,  from 
Spenser  and  Milton  to  Tennyson  and  Browning,  most 
of  them  read  Greek  before  they  wrote  English  poetry 
of  any  consequence.  The  inference  is  obvious;  we 
may  put  it  in  the  form  of  the  advice  which  one  of 
them,  Wordsworth,  gave  to  his  nephew:  'Remember, 
first  read  the  ancient  classical  authors;  then  come 
to  us,  and  you  will  be  able  to  judge  for  yourself 
which  of  us  is  worth  reading.'^  Precisely  so.  Let 
our  Freshmen  and  Sophomores  first  study  Greek 
and  Latin  (and  we  may  add,  history  and  mathemat- 
ics) ;  then,  in  the  Junior  or,  better,  the  Senior  year, 
let  them  specialize  if  they  will  in  English,  and  they 
will  be  able  to  judge  for  themselves  what  is  worth 
while  in  that  subject.  As  for  prospective  teachers  of 
English,  one  may  say  to  them:  Remember,  first  ac- 
quaint yourselves  with  the  method  of  interpretation 
and  criticism  that  has  been  developed  by  twenty- 
three  centuries  of  classical  scholarship  in  Europe, 
and  you  will  be  able  to  judge  for  yourselves  how 

^Memoirs  of  William  Wordsworth,  by  Christopher  Words- 
worth, p.  467. 


SHAKESPEAEE  AND  PLUTAECH       21 

much  or  how  little  variation  there  need  be  in  apply- 
ing this  method  to  the  study  of  the  vernacular. 

Again,  it  will  surely  be  granted  that  on  the  part 
of  a  student,  as  distinct  from  the  naive  and  unformed 
reader,  no  greater  mistake  can  be  made  than  to  fancy 
a  particular  thought  or  expression  in  an  English 
author  to  be  original  with  him,  and  an  indubitable 
mark  of  his  special  genius,  when  in  fact  it  is  not  orig- 
inal with  him,  but  comes,  let  us  say,  through  successive 
intermediate  translations,  from  the  Greek  of  Plutarch. 
There  is  a  striking  description  in  Shakespeare's  Antony 
and  Cleopatra  of  the  Egyptian  Queen  as  she  first 
appeared  to  the  hero : 

When  she  first  met  Mark  Antony,  she  pursed  up  his  heart, 

upon  the  river  of  Cydnus  .  .  . 
The  barge  she  sat  in,  like  a  burnished  throne, 
Burned  on  the  water ;  the  poop  was  beaten  gold ; 
Purple  the  sails,  and  so  perfumed  that 
The  winds  were  love-sick  with  them ;  the  oars  were  silver. 
Which  to  the  tune  of  flutes  kept  stroke,  and  made 
The  water  which  they  beat  to  follow  faster. 
As  amorous  of  their  strokes.    For  her  own  person, 
It  beggared  all  description ;  she  did  lie 
In  her  pavilion — cloth-of-gold  of  tissue — 
O'er-picturing  that  Venus  where  we  see 
The  fancy  outwork  nature;  on  each  side  her 
Stood  pretty-dimpled  boys,  like  smiling  Cupids, 
With  divers-colored  fans,  whose  wind  did  seem 
To  glow  the  delicate  cheeks  which  they  did  cool. 
And  what  they  undid  did.^ 

Is   the   description   original?    So   far   as   we   are 
1  Antony  and  Cleopatra  2.  2.  191-2,  196-210. 
3 


22  ANCIENT  AND  MODERN  LETTERS 

aware,  the  only  measure  of  its  originality  is  the  pas- 
sage, in  North's  translation  from  the  French  version 
of  Plutarch  by  Amyot,  which  Shakespeare  happens 
to  be  adapting : 

'  When  she  was  sent  unto  by  divers  letters  .  .  .  she 
.  .  .  mocked  Antonius  so  much  that  she  disdained  to 
set  forward  otherwise,  but  to  take  her  barge  in  the 
river  of  Cydnus,  the  poop  whereof  was  of  gold,  the 
sails  of  purple,  and  the  oars  of  silver,  which  kept 
stroke  in  rowing  after  the  sound  of  the  music  of 
flutes,  howboys,  citherns,  viols,  and  such  other  instru- 
ments as  they  played  upon  in  the  barge.  And  now 
for  the  person  of  herself :  she  was  laid  under  a  pavil- 
ion of  cloth  of  gold  of  tissue,  apparelled  and  attired 
like  the  goddess  Venus  commonly  drawn  in  picture; 
and  hard  by  her,  on  either  hand  of  her,  pretty  fair 
boys  apparelled  as  painters  do  set  forth  god  Cupid, 
with  little  fans  in  their  hands,  with  the  which  they 
fanned  wind  upon  her. '  ^ 

Upon  this  showing,  which  seems  to  be  the  more 
original,  Shakespeare,  or  the  biographer  of  Chsero- 
nea?  And  if  Shakespeare  and  his  age  could  draw 
so  much  inspiration  from  Plutarch  at  two  or  three 
removes,  why  has  Plutarch  disappeared  from  the 
circle  of  humane  studies  to-day — that  Plutarch  who 
subsequently  made  fruitful  the  genius  of  a  modern 
educator,  Rousseau?  Moreover,  Plutarch  is  himself 
a  late  and  relatively  unoriginal  Greek.  The  ultimate 
sources  of  vital  ideas,  of  philosophm,  lie  far  behind 
him. 

But  again,  it  often  happens  that  some  portion  of 
a  modem  author  is  almost  unintelligible  unless  we 

1  See  Plutarch's  Lives  of  Coriolanus,  Caesar,  Brutus,  and 
Antonms  in  North's  Translation,  ed.  by  R.  H.  Carr,  pp.  185-6. 


CLASSICAL  IMAGES  IN  MODERN  POETS  23 

are  familiar  with  the  Greek  or  Latin  image  which 
he  has  in  mind.  One  is  bound,  for  example,  to  think 
that  Shelley's  picture  of  himself  in  lines  289-295  of 
Adonais  must  be  well-nigh  meaningless  to  the  reader 
who  is  unacquainted  with  the  Greek  conception  of 
the  suffering  wanderer  Dionysus: 

His  head  was  bound  with  pansies  overblown, 
And  faded  violets,  white,  and  pied,  and  blue; 
And  a  light  spear  topped  with  a  cypress  cone, 
Eound  whose  rude  shaft  dark  ivy-tresses  grew 
Yet  dripping  with  the  forest's  noonday  dew, 
Vibrated,  as  the  ever-beating  heart 
Shook  the  weak  hand  that  grasped  it. 

And  certainly  it  makes  the  voluptuous  nature  of  the 
hero  in  Wordsworth's  popm,  Ruth,  more  compre- 
hensible if  our  previous  studies  have  shown  us  that 
the  panther  and  the  dolphin  are  the  classic  com- 
panions of  Dionysus  in  his  joy: 

He  was  a  lovely  youth!     I  guess 

The  panther  in  the  wilderness 

Was  not  so  fair  as  he; 

And,  when  he  chose  to  sport  and  play, 

No  dolphin  ever  was  so  gay 

Upon  the  tropic  sea.^ 

'The  poetry  of  ancient  Greece  and  Rome,  and 
modern  Italy,  and  our  own  country,'  says  Shelley 
in  his  Preface  to  The  Revolt  of  Islam,  'has  been  to 
me,  like  external  nature,  a  passion  and  an  enjoy- 
ment.    Such  are  the  sources  from  which  the  ma- 

1  Ruth  37-42. 


24  ANCIENT  AND  MODERN  LETTERS 

terials  for  the  imagery  of  my  poem  have  been  drawn. 
I  .  .  .  have  read  the  poets  and  the  historians  and 
the  metaphysicians  whose  writings  have  been  acces- 
sible to  me.'  And  he  adds  that  the  training  he  has 
received,  with  the  feelings  it  has  evoked,  does  not 
in  itself  constitute  men  poets,  'hut  only  prepares 
them  to  de  the  auditors  of  those  who  are.' 

One  might  multiply  examples  without  end.  The 
truth  is  that  English  literature,  not  merely  from 
the  time  of  Chaucer,  but  from  the  very  outset,  far 
from  being  original  in  the  ordinary  acceptation  of 
the  word,  is  derivative  to  an  extent  undreamed  of 
by  the  layman;  and,  though  the  direct  sources  of 
inspiration  are  often  French  authors  or  Spanish,  or 
more  often,  perhaps,  Italian,  the  chief  immediate 
source  of  most  of  the  ideas  of  our  poets  has  been 
Latin  literature — and  the  ultimate  source  (aside 
from  the  Old  Testament)  is  Greek.  That  all  roads 
lead  to  Rome  is  as  true  for  English  as  for  the  modem 
Continental  literatures;  and  a  thousand  roads  lead 
back  from  Rome  to  Greece.  Accordingly,  the  one 
great  model  of  English  prose  is  Cicero,  whose  model 
was  Demosthenes;  and  the  great  writers  of  English 
prose  from  Milton  to  Burke,  and  from  Burke  to 
Newman,  have  been  familiar  with  either  or  both. 
And  the  two  chief  wells  whence  English  poets  have 
drawn  their  notions  of  poetic  style,  as  well  as  their 
mythological  allusions,  have  been  Virgil  and  Ovid — 
Virgil,  who  takes  his  inspiration  from  the  Alexan- 
drians and  from  Homer,  and  Ovid,  who  collected  and 
arranged  nearly  all  that  is  known  of  Graeco-Roman 


SHORT  CUTS  TO  THE  POETS         25 

mythology.  To  an  age  that  is  eager  for  almost  any 
short  cut  to  the  intelligent  reading  of  our  English 
poets,  we  might  say  that  a  hundred  hours  devoted 
to  Ovid  and  Virgil,  even  read  in  translations,  would 
be  worth  thousands  of  hours  spent  upon  most  of  the 
books  in  the  lists  that  have  been  adopted  for  'en- 
trance English.'  Of  the  mythological  allusions  in 
Shakespeare  'for  which  a  definite  source  can  be  as- 
signed, it  will  be  found  that  an  overwhelming  major- 
ity are  directly  due  to  Ovid,  while  the  remainder, 
with  few  exceptions,  are  from  Virgil.'  So  says  a 
competent  investigator;  and  he  adds:  *A  man  famil- 
iar with  these  two  authors,  and  with  no  others, 
would  be  able  to  make  all  the  mythological  allusions 
contained  in  the  undisputed  works  of  Shakespeare, 
barring  some  few  exceptions'^ — which  we  may  here 
neglect. 

But  there  is  no  need  at  present  of  advocating  a 
short  cut  to  the  interpretation  of  modern  authors; 
if  there  were,  it  would  be  time  to  remark  upon  the 
necessity  of  studying  the  English  Bible  before  at- 
tempting to  read  authors  who  knew  it  by  heart,  and 
who  use  its  thought  and  language  as  a  common  pos- 
session of  the  reading  public.  What  needs  to  be 
advocated  is  a  short  cut  to  that  inner  substance  of 
the  Greek  classics,  that  sophia  which  the  Greeks  es- 
pecially loved,  that  leaven  which  has  diffused  itself, 
by  way  of  Rome,  throughout  all  modern  literatures. 
There  is  but  one  short  cut  to  the  substance  of  Greek, 
and  that  way  lies  through  the  letters  which  enfold 

*  Robert  K.  Root,  Classical  Mythology  m  Shakespeare,  p.  3. 


26  ANCIENT  AND  MODERN  LETTERS 

it.  They  are  not  dead,  and  they  do  not  kill.  The 
eternal  spirit  which  inhabits  those  letters  imparts 
its  life  to  them,  and  makes  them  beautiful.  There 
really  is  no  arguing  about  the  matter ;  only  they  who 
know  that  spirit,  incarnate  in  those  letters,  are  in 
a  position  to  speak  of  the  value  of  either  in  a  sys- 
tem of  education.  Emphatically  must  one  add  that 
they  who  have  but  dabbled  in  Greek,  and  have  not 
loved  it,  or  do  not  now  love  it,  are  not  in  a  position 
to  speak  on  the  subject ;  nor  are  they  who  never  had 
an  opportunity  of  studying  it.  But  the  latter  class 
at  least  may  attend  to  the  deliberate  judgment  of  a 
tea,cher  of  English,  a  judgment  based  upon  direct 
observation:  In  nine  cases  out  of  ten,  the  under- 
graduates who  think  the  best  thoughts  and  express 
them  in  the  best  way,  and  who  utter  right  opinion 
when  they  examine  the  standard  modern  authors, 
are  those  who  have  studied,  or  are  studying,  Greek 
and  Latin.  *A  great  London  editor  told  me,'  de- 
clares Goldwin  Smith  in  his  Reminiscences,^  'that 
the  only  members  of  his  staff  who  wrote  in  good 
form  from  the  beginning  had  practised  Latin  verse.' 

'In  regard  to  antiquity  as  an  element  of  education,' 
says  an  eminent  Russian,  Professor  Zielinski,  'people 
are  disposed  to  deem  it  merely  a  singular  survival, 
which  has  maintained  its  footing  in  our  modern 
school  curriculum  in  some  unintelligible  way,  and 
for  some  unintelligible  reason,  but  which  is  destined 
to  make  a  speedy  and  final  disappearance.  But  the 
man  who  understands  the  true  position  of  affairs  will 
rejoin  that  antiquity,  .  .  .  owing  both  to  historical 
» P.  36. 


SENDING  STUDENTS  TO  GREEK  27 

and  psychological  causes,  is,  and  must  be  considered, 
an  organic  element  of  education  in  European  schools, 
and  that,  if  it  be  destined  to  disappear  entirely,  its 
end  will  coincide  with  the  end  of  modern  European 
culture. '  ^ 

In  America,  such  groups  as  the  Society  of  Phi 
Beta  Kappa  are  not  to  regard  themselves  as  uncon- 
cerned in  the  cultivation  of  Greek  letters  and  the 
diffusion  of  the  Hellenic  spirit.  The  influence  pos- 
sessed by  small,  yet  well-organized,  groups  is  suffi- 
cient to  divert  thousands  of  new  students  every  year 
into  the  pursuit  of  classical  subjects;  it  is  sufficient 
within  a  generation  to  convert  twenty  American  uni- 
versities into  as  many  leading  institutions  in  the 
realm  of  humane  studies ;  it  is  sufficient  to  accomplish 
this,  if  each  individual  who  has  faith  in  Greek  will 
attempt  at  the  beginning  of  every  academic  term  to 
implant  his  faith  in  the  heart  of  two  other  persons. 
The  effort  must  begin  with  individuals.  Let  all  who 
believe  shake  off  their  apathy  and  indifference,  their 
timorous  regard  for  vulgar  opinion,  their  supine 
acquiescence  in  conditions  which  they  know  to  be 
evil ;  and  let  them  resolutely  send  their  most  promis- 
ing pupils,  and  younger  fellow-students,  to  the  tables 
where  generations  of  those  who  hungered  and  thirsted 
after  wisdom  have  been  fed,  and  felt  no  lack. 

Meanwhile  the  members  of  our  learned  societies 
should  strive,  according  to  their  powers,  to  make  each 
society  perform  its  office  in  the  body  educational. 
At  many  of  our  colleges  and  universities,  an  election 

*  Ow  Debt  to  Antiquity,  pp.  2-3. 


28  ANCIENT  AND  MODERN  LETTERS 

to  the  Society  of  Phi  Beta  Kappa,  for  example,  con- 
stitutes the  sole  distinction  that  is  conferred  upon 
pure  scholarship  without  an  attendant  pecuniary 
reward.  By  their  words  and  actions  the  members 
should  make  clear  that  they  believe  in  the  distinc- 
tion; because  it  sets  a  premium  on  the  men  and  wo- 
men whose  nominal  and  real  business  in  a  place  of 
study  are  eminently  one  and  the  same,  that  is,  the 
business  or  activity  of  students;  and  because  it  puts 
the  mark  of  high  success  upon  the  sort  of  men  and 
women  for  whom  American  idealists  have  founded 
universities.  After  a  period  in  education  during 
which  everything  has  been  tolerated  save  orthodoxy, 
it  might  be  well  to  tolerate  orthodoxy.  Furthermore, 
in  order  to  enhance  true  distinctions,  one  need  not 
hesitate  openly  to  condemn,  wherever  it  may  appear, 
the  shallow  thinking  that  gives  honor  to  the  man 
whose  nominal  business  is  study,  but  who  slights  his 
manifest  duty,  and,  apparently,  succeeds  at  some- 
thing else.  A  characteristic  of  the  vulgar,  says  the 
caustic  Shakespearean  Ulysses,  is  their  frantic  wor- 
ship of  a  tinsel  success  that  is  not  conjoined  with  the 
permanent  issues  of  life: 

One  touch  of  nature  makes  the  whole  world  kin. 
That  all  with  one  consent  praise  new-born  gawds  .  .  . 
And  give  to  dust  that  is  a  little  gilt 
More  laud  than  gilt  o'er-dusted.^ 

» Iroilus  and  Cressida  3.  3,  175-6,  178-9. 


ACADEMIC  DISTINCTION  29 

But  our  athlete  of  the  intellect  may  say  to  the 
world,  to  the  heroes  of  the  stadium,  in  the  language 
of  King  Agamemnon: 

Why,  then,  you  princes, 
Do  you  with  cheeks  abashed  behold  our  works, 
And  call  them  shames  ?  which  are  indeed  nought  else 
But  the  protractive  trials  of  great  Jove, 
To  find  i)ersistive  constancy  in  men: 
The  fineness  of  which  metal  is  not  found 
In  Fortune's  love;  for  then  the  bold  and  coward, 
The  wise  and  fool,  the  artist^  and  unread. 
The  hard  and  soft,  seem  all  affined  and  kin. 
But  in  the  wind  and  tempest  of  her  frown, 
Distinction,  with  :i  broad  and  powerful  fan. 
Puffing  at  all,  winnows  the  light  away; 
And  what  hath  mass  or  matter,  by  itself 
Lies  rich  in  virtue  and  unmingled.^ 

*  The  student  of  the  seven  liberal  arts. 
'  Troilus  and  Cressida  1.  3. 17-30. 


Ill 


THE  TEACHING  OF  ENGLISH  AND 
THE  STUDY  OF  THE  CLASSICS' 

THE  *  cultural  value '  of  the  classics  is  a  large  topic, 
which  we  must  in  some  way  restrict.  There 
will  be  a  suitable  restriction  if  we  discuss  the  value 
of  an  early  training  in  Greek  and  Latin  as  it  appears 
to  a  teacher  of  English,  after  an  experience  of  a 
dozen  years  and  more  with  pupils  in  the  modern  sub- 
ject. This  done,  it  will  not  be  improper  to  indulge 
in  a  few  general  reflections. 

Let  us  have  specially  in  mind  the  needs  and  the 
opportunities  of  first-rate  students  when  they  leave 
the  preparatory  school,  and  are  not  immediately  to 
take  part  in  active  life.  They  are  about  to  enter 
the  academic  course  of  a  college  or  university,  where 
they  will  be  called  upon  to  write  numerous  essays 
in  the  mother  tongue,  and  to  read  selections  from 
the  standard  modem  authors.  What  qualities,  and 
what  training,  should  we  expect  them  to  bring  to 
the  performance  of  these  tasks?  To  write  a  fair 
essay  presupposes  a  certain  grade  of  cultivation ;  and 

*  The  substance  of  a  paper  read  before  the  Classical  Associa- 
tion of  the  Atlantic  States  at  its  eighth  annual  meeting,  April 
18,  1914.  It  is  reprinted,  with  a  few  alterations,  from  the  Edu- 
cational Eeview  for  January,  1915,  pp.  37-47,  with  the  kind  perr 
mission  of  the  publishers. 

30 


HINTS  FEOM  THE  POETS  31 

to  sympathize  with  one  of  the  great  English  poets — 
with  Spenser  or  Milton,  for  example,  or,  let  us  say, 
with  a  lesser  poet  like  Coleridge — means  that  one 
must  have  something  in  common,  in  the  way  of  train- 
ing, with  a  man  who  wrote  well,  and  who  did  so, 
partly  because  of  his  genius,  but  partly  also  because 
he  was  well-taught.  This  immediately  raises  the 
question,  how  have  the  masters  of  the  English  tongue 
been  educated — how  did  they  learn  to  write? 

Before  suggesting  an  answer  to  this  question,  it 
may  not  be  out  of  place  to  marvel  at  teachers  of 
English,  and  of  other  modern  literatures,  at  our 
administrative  officers  in  the  higher  education,  and 
above  all  at  our  professors  of  pedagogy,  for  their 
general  lack  of  interest  in  certain  inquiries  which  no 
teacher,  and  no  overseer  in  the  art  of  teaching,  should 
neglect.  Their  interests  commonly  are  of  another 
sort.  They  have  traced  the  general  history  of  educa- 
tion, and  the  history  of  various  movements  in  educa- 
tion, and  can  tell  you,  it  may  be,  what  Plato  and 
Comenius,  or  Herbart  and  Eousseau,  have  said  or 
thought  about  the  discipline  of  youth ;  perhaps  they 
can  even  explain  the  relation  of  experimental  psy- 
chology to  what  we  used  to  call  'mental  arithmetic'; 
but  they  have  given  little  heed  to  the  way  in  which 
great  teachers  actually  have  taught,  or  men  of  ac- 
knowledged attainments  have  acquired  their  power. 

We  need  not  pursue  this  line  of  thought  beyond 
remarking  that  the  authors  in  whose  works  our  col- 
legians will  read,  and  about  whom  they  will  write, 
had,  almost  to  a  man,  a  classical  training,  and  did 


32  ENGLISH  AND  THE  CLASSICS 

not  secure  their  command  over  the  English  tongue 
without  some  acquaintance  with  Greek  and  Latin. 
The  record  of  the  studies  of  Chaucer,  Spenser,  Shake- 
speare, Milton,  Pope,  Dryden,  Gray,  Wordsworth, 
Tennyson,  and  Browning,  and  of  Bacon,  Chatham, 
Johnson,  Burke,  Ruskin,  and  Newman,  represents 
the  great  experiment  in  English  education — an  ex- 
periment lasting  through  centuries,  and  a  successful 
one,  the  results  of  which  no  teacher  or  theorist  on 
teaching  in  the  field  of  English  may  set  aside. 

So  much  in  general;  it  may  be  wise  to  add  a  con- 
crete illustration.  Let  us  consider  the  weekly  rou- 
tine of  the  upper  class  in  Christ's  Hospital,  the  school 
where  Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge  was  prepared  for 
Cambridge,  and  was  inflamed  with  a  love  of  English 
— ^where,  in  fact,  he  laid  the  foundations  of  a  literary 
training.  Here  is  approximately  what  he  and  the 
best  of  his  fellow-pupils,  the  'Senior  Grecians,'  were 
doing  at  the  famous  charity  school  at  London  in  the 
year  1790: 

'Monday  morning:  Homer  or  Tragic  Chorus  by 
heart;  Greek  Tragedy.  Monday  afternoon:  He- 
brew Psalter;  Horace  or  Juvenal.  Written  exercise 
for  Monday:  English  and  Latin  theme,  in  alternate 
weeks. 

'Tuesday  morning:  Xenophon  at  sight;  Homer. 
Tuesday  afternoon:  Mathematical  Scholium.  Ex- 
ercise for  Tuesday:    Huntingford's  Greek  Exercises. 

'Wednesday  morning:  Cicero's  Orations  at  sight; 
Livy  or  Cicero.  Wednesday  afternoon :  English 
Speaking ;  Tacitus.  Exercise  for  Wednesday :  Greek 
translation. 

'Thursday  morning:  Virgil  by  heart;  Demos- 
thenes.    Thursday  afternoon:     Mathematical  Schol- 


COLEEIDGE  AT  SCHOOL  33 

ium.  Exercise  for  Thursday:  Greek  verses,  and 
translation  from  English  into  Latin. 

'Friday  morning:  Horace  or  Juvenal  by  heart; 
Greek  Tragedy  or  Aristophanes.  Friday  afternoon: 
Hebrew;  Latin  Speaking.  Exercise  for  Friday: 
Latin  translation. 

'Saturday  morning:  Scale's  Metres;  Repetition. 
Exercise  for  Saturday:  Latin  and  English  verses 
alternately,  with  an  abstract.' 

'As  the  time  of  continuance  on  the  Grecian's  form 
is  always  three,  and  generally  four,  years,'  says  the 
historian  of  the  school,  '  a  very  considerable  acquaint- 
ance with  the  higher  classics,  as  well  as  a  readiness 
in  the  composition  of  English,  Greek,  and  Latin, 
verse  and  prose,  is  easily  attainable  within  this 
period,  and  forms  a  substantial  groundwork  for  the 
more  extensive  researches  of  academical  study. '  ^ 

'At  school,'  says  Coleridge  himself,  *I  enjoyed 
the  inestimable  advantage  of  a  very  sensible,  though 
at  the  same  time  a  very  severe,  master  [James  Boyer] . 
He  early  moulded  my  taste  to  the  preference  of 
Demosthenes  to  Cicero,  of  Homer  and  Theocritus  to 
Virgil,  and  again  of  Virgil  to  Ovid.  He  habituated 
me  to  compare  Lucretius,  (in  such  extracts  as  I  then 
read)  Terence,  and,  above  all,  the  chaster  poems  of 
Catullus,  not  only  with  the  Roman  poets  of  the  so- 
called  silver  and  brazen  ages,  but  with  even  those 
of  the  Augustan  era;  and  on  grounds  of  plain  sense 
and  universal  logic  to  see  and  assert  the  superiority 
of  the  former  in  the  truth  and  nativeness  both  of 
their  thoughts  and  diction.     At  the  same  time  that 

^  William  TroUope,  A  History  of  the  Soyal  Foundation  of 
Christ 's  Hospital,  London,  1834,  p.  183.  For  the  close  relation 
between  the  scheme  of  studies  under  TroUope  and  the  one  origi- 
nated by  Boyer,  who  taught  Coleridge,  see  TroUope,  p.  182. 


34  ENGLISH  AND  THE  CLASSICS 

we  were  studying  the  Greek  tragic  poets,  he  made 
us  read  Shakespeare  and  Milton  as  lessons ;  and  they 
were  the  lessons,  too,  which  required  most  time  and 
trouble  to  "bring  up"  so  as  to  escape  his  censure. 
I  learnt  from  him  that  poetry,  even  that  of  the  lofti- 
est and,  seemingly,  that  of  the  wildest  odes,  had  a 
logic  of  its  own,  as  severe  as  that  of  science,  and  more 
difficult,  because  more  subtle,  more  complex,  and  de- 
pendent upon  more,  and  more  fugitive,  causes.  In 
the  truly  great  poets,  he  would  say,  there  is  a  reason 
assignable,  not  only  for  every  word,  but  for  the  posi- 
tion of  every  word. '  ^ 

The  career  of  Coleridge  shows  the  way  in  which 
the  grea,t  experiment,  if  one  may  so  describe  it, 
worked  out  in  a  particular  instance.  Such  instances 
might  be  multiplied  ;2  and  the  inference  as  to  the 
nature  of  a  liberal  education,  which  means  an  edu- 
cation in  good  taste,  would  not  be  obscure.  But  the 
experiment  of  a  classical  training  still  continues,  not 
only  in  England  and  on  the  Continent,  but  even  in 
America;  nor  can  we  make  light  of  the  results  as 
they  appear,  or  are  wanting,  in  the  successive  genera- 
tions of  young  men  and  women  who  throng  to  our 
higher  institutions  of  learning  in  search  of  what  is 
termed  culture.  What  can  we  discover  from  an  in- 
spection of  our  students? 

First,  those  relatively  few  young  persons  of  our 
day  who  possess  an  adequate  grounding  in  Greek 
and  Latin  have  this  in  common  with  the  English 

*  Coleridge,  Biographia  Literaria,  ed.  by  Shawcross,  1.  4;  com- 
pare Young's  Preface  to  Ocean,  an  Ode. 

*  See,  for  example.  Section  V,  On  the  Studies  of  Poets,  in  my 
Methods  and  Aims  in  the  Study  of  Literature,  1915,  pp.  96-186. 


CLASSICAL  STUDENTS  KNOW  GRAMMAE         35 

poets:   they   know   something   about   grammar — not 
English  grammar  specifically,  nor  Greek,  nor  Latin, 
but  grammar  in  general.     They  recognize  subject, 
copula,,   and  predicate,   whenever  they   meet  them; 
they  have  an  understanding  for  order  and  relation 
in  the  parts  of  a  sentence.    They  are  accustomed  to 
see  the  elements  of  language  as  elements,  and  are 
not  incapable  of  arranging  them  in  orderly  fashion. 
They  know  the  difference  between  a  temporal  and  a 
causal  connective;  they  can  distinguish  between  post 
hoc  and  propter  hoc — a  very  important  distinction  in 
life.    The  reason  why  they  can  do  so  is  that,  whereas 
it  is  possible  to   express  oneself   either  loosely   or 
distinctly  in  English,   according  to   one's  previous 
education,  both  Greek  and  Latin  compel  the  school- 
boy to  make  a  sharp  distinction  between  one  thought 
and  another.    This  is  precisely  what  they  who  have 
missed  a  severe  linguistic  training  are  never  prone 
to  do.    The  teacher  of  a  modern  language  and  litera- 
ture should  in  this  case  know  whereof  he  speaks. 
He  should  know  why  he  is  glad  to  welcome  students 
of  Latin  and  Greek  to  classes  in  English.     There 
may  be  exceptions;  if  so,  these  are  negligible.     In 
the  long  run,  they  who  have  done  well  with  Greek 
or  Latin  in  the  preparatory  school  can  write  pas- 
sable English  as  Freshmen  in  the  university,  and 
they  who  have  had  neither  are  ungrammatical  and 
otherwise  slovenly  in  usage. 

Next,  the  youth  with  a  classical  training  has  a 
superior  knowledge,  not  only  of  connectives  that  are 
by  themselves  non-significant,  but  also  of  the  signifi- 


36  ENGLISH  AND  THE  CLASSICS 

cant  elements  in  the  English  vocabulary.  In  par- 
ticular, as  compared  with  the  youth  who  lacks  that 
training,  he  recognizes  and  can  use  what  we  call 
'learned'  words — that  is,  the  sort  of  words  that  an 
educated  man  employs,  and  an  uneducated  man  does 
not.  Year  after  year  one  may  toil  with  successive 
groups  of  uneducated  Sophomores  over  the  meaning 
and  pronunciation  of  the  sixth  stanza  in  Coleridge's 
Dejection,  an  Ode,  that  stanza  in  which  the  author 
has  epitomized  his  tragic  life.  And  why  this  recur- 
rent toil?  Because  the  poet  has  here  made  use  of 
terms  like  resource,  research,  and  abstruse — 

And  haply  by  abstruse  research  to  steal 
From  my  own  nature  aU  the  natural  man — 
This  was  my  sole  resource — 

which  fifteen  out  of  twenty  in  a  class  will  mispro- 
nounce, and  which  they  do  not  comprehend,  being 
unfamiliar  with  the  Latin  that  survives  in  modern 
French  and  English.  The  ugly  combination  'research 
work'  (and  who  is  responsible  for  this  pronuncia- 
tion?) they  have  heard,  perhaps  in  a  laboratory;  it 
does  not,  one  may  readily  imagine,  occur  in  any 
English  poet.  Our  fifteen  Sophomores  will  dimly 
gather  what  the  combination  signifies,  because  in 
intellectual  work  they  see  their  ancient  foe;  they 
.will  look  wise  or  otherwise  when  told  that  resea/rch 
is  a  'learned'  word;  they  will  smile  when  they  hear 
that  its  fellow  is  one  of  those  that  students  of  Latin 
and  English  call  'popular.' 

Again,  the  fit  though  few  among  those  undergradu- 
ates who  engage  in  the  study  of  English  have  more 


THE  SENSE  OF  ORDER  37 

orderly  minds  for  the  larger  details,  as  well  as  the 
smaller,  in  written  composition.  They  excel  their 
untutored  comrades  in  joining  sentence  to  sentence 
when  they  build  up  a  paragraph,  and  in  linking 
paragraph  to  paragraph  to  form  an  essay.  And  why 
is  this  ?  Because  the  fit  though  few  have  had  their 
mental  operations  regulated  by  a  progress  through 
some  portions  of  Greek  and  Latin  literature;  and 
because  the  Greek  and  Latin  authors  that  have  come 
down  to  us  differ  from  the  rank  and  file  of  modern 
authors  in  evincing  a  better  sequence  of  thought. 
Of  course  we  must  guard  against  any  misapprehen- 
sion that  the  ancient  classics  are  to  be  deemed  in  all 
ways  superior  to  modern  literature.  On  the  con- 
trary, it  is  evident  that  in  developing  a  boy  of  our 
generation  into  a  clear-headed  gentleman,  if  the  an- 
cients will  help  more  in  making  him  clear-headed  (and 
yet  to  some  extent  gentle  as  well) ,  the  modern  writers, 
or  some  of  them,  can  perform  the  greater  service  in 
creating  within  him  a  clean  and  tender  heart.  The 
fact  remains,  however,  that  in  Sophocles  the  train  of 
thought  is  more  cogent  than  in  Shakespeare,  as  the 
internal  order  of  a  speech  in  the  Odyssey  is  more 
lucid  than  in  Paradise  Lost. 

Further,  the  boy  with  the  classical  training,  since 
he  is  not  so  apt  to  be  muddle-headed,  is  more  likely 
to  discriminate  against  false  sentiment  in  what  he 
reads,  and  still  more  likely  to  object  to  metrical 
bombast  or  nonsense  when  it  is  offered  him  as  poetry. 
'Coleridge!'  said  his  redoubtable  teacher  at  Christ's 
Hospital,  'the  connections  of  a  declamation  are  not 

476  81 


38  ENGLISH  AND  THE  Ca^ASSICS 

the  transitions  of  poetry.  Bad,  however,  as  they 
are,  they  are  better  than  apostrophes  and  "0  thou's," 
for  at  the  worst  they  are  something  like  common 
sense. '^  Since  the  time  of  Coleridge,  as  the  influ- 
ence of  classical  poetry  has  declined,  the  besetting 
sin  of  poets  has  been  a  lack  of  precision  and  good 
sense.  In  her  fumbling  description  of  A  Lost  Chord, 
Adelaide  Procter  writes: 

It  seemed   the  harmonious  echo 
From  our  discordant  life. 

The  echo  of  a  discord  is  not  harmonious.  A  boy 
who  has  studied  the  fable  of  Echo  and  Narcissus  in 
the  Metamorphoses  of  Ovid  is  aware  that  in  litera- 
ture, as  in  his  own  experience  among  the  hills,  an 
echo  is  true  when  it  closely  resembles  the  original 
sound.  As  an  able  critic  notes,  'Sentimentality  has, 
in  this  disguise  or  that,  existed  and  poisoned  Eng- 
lish poetry  at  all  times  since  the  sixteenth  century. 
But,  for  its  fellow  vice,  vagueness,  this  is  otherwise. 
For  vagueness  there  has  indeed  been  no  time  so 
fertile  as  the  first  forty  years  of  the  nineteenth 
century. '  ^  The  beginning  of  the  twentieth  century 
is  not  free  from  it.  Greek  poetry  in  the  fifth  cen- 
tury before  Christ  is  not  vague  or  sentimental,  nor  is 
Homer  or  Virgil.  When  our  Freshman  is  imbued 
with  the  spirit  of  Greek  and  Latin  verse,  he  is  in 

*  Coleridge,  Complete  Poetical  WorTcs,  ed.  by  E.  H.  CJoleridge, 
p.  3,  footnote. 

2  Edith  Sichel,  Some  Suggestions  about  Bad  Poetry,  in  Essays 
and  Studies  hy  Members  of  the  English  Association,  collected  by 
A,  C.  Bradley,  1910,  p.  139. 


HIGHER  ADVANTAGES  39 

some  measure  armed  against  the  insidious  attacks 
of  bad  taste. 

Finally,  the  boy  who  has  been  drilled  in  the  clas- 
sics has  an  immense  advantage  because  he  knows 
something  of  ancient  story,  of  tradition — of  mythol- 
ogy in  a  wide  sense — and  is  not  unacquainted  with 
those  living  forms,  divine  yet  human,  in  which  the 
ancients  embodied  their  highest  conceptions  of  man, 
and  their  noblest  religious  convictions,  the  head  and 
front  of  their  culture.  In  dealing  with  English 
authors,  he  is  not  continually  checked  and  baffled 
by  allusions  which  were  intended  to  be  clear,  and 
are  so  to  an  educated  public.  To  the  boy  who  is 
otherwise  trained,  that  is,  untrained  for  the  study 
of  English,  they  are  not  clear,  and  may  envelop  in 
an  atmosphere  of  uncertainty  passage  after  passage 
in  any  substantial  author  that  he  happens  to  take 
up.  Can  he  appreciate  George  Eliot  in  Romola  when 
she  likens  the  shifty  Tito  Melema  to  Ba,cchus,  if  he 
is  wholly  ignorant  of  ancient  ideas  concerning  the 
slippery  and  unstable  Dionysus?  And  how  can  he 
read  Milton  if  he  is  unfamiliar,  not  only  with  the 
Bible,  but  also  with  Homer  and  Virgil?  For,  be  it 
noted  that,  whatever  the  reason,  a  decline  of  inter- 
est in  the  Scriptures  has  gone  hand  in  hand  with  a 
growing  indifference  to  the  literary  art  of  Greece 
and  Rome.  Indeed,  one  is  reminded  that  Charles 
the  Great,  at  a  critical  juncture  for  modem  civiliza- 
tion, enjoined  the  study  of  letters,  that  is,  of  Latin, 
upon  his  clergy,  in  order  that  the  study  of  the  Scrip- 
tures might  not  languish  in  his  realm.    Would  that 


40  ENGLISH  AND  THE  CLASSICS 

a  modern  statesman  might  arise  with  equal  power 
and  foresight  to  influence  our  general  education, 
and  that  shortly  no  one  having  the  reputation  of  a 
cultivated  man  might  be  unable  to  read  at  first  hand 
the  most  sublime  of  all  mysteries,  in  the  Greek  of 
the  New  Testament!  The  boy  with  a  classical  train- 
ing has  immediate  access  to  the  highest  ideal  of  man- 
kind. 

In  this  gamut  of  advantages  we  have  run  from 
small  details  to  large  considerations.  "We  began  with 
the  discipline  a  youth,  may  receive  through.  Greek 
and  Latin  in  using  the  elements  of  expression;  we 
have  come  to  the  benefit  he  may  derive  from  these 
subjects  in  the  interpretation  of  human  discourse, 
or  of  a  masterpiece  as  a  whole,  and  in  the  assimila- 
tion of  humanizing  ideas.  It  is  common,  of  course, 
to  separate  the  disciplinary  function  of  the  classics 
from  the  cultural ;  but  it  is  better  to  assume  that  no 
such  cleavage  exists.  One  never  can  draw  a  sharp 
line  of  demarcation  between  the  outward  form  of 
expression  and  the  idea  that  is  expressed,  or  view 
the  spirit  apart  from  the  letter  through  which  it  is 
revealed.  And  so  long  as  this  is  so,  literary  disci- 
pline, involving  a  detailed  examination  of  language, 
cannot  be  severed  from  literary  culture. 

Indeed,  it  cannot  be  too  often  observed  that  all 
culture  is  unified,  and  that  its  final  aim  is  to  elimi- 
nate the  trivial  and  the  false  from  our  ideal  of  hu- 
manity; to  abstract  from  the  best  sources,  however 
remote  or  neglected,  whatever  will  define  and  en- 
noble that  ideal;  and  to  transmit  an  ever  more  vital 


THE  UNITY  OF  ALL  CULTUEE  41 

image  of  humanity  for  daily  contemplation  by  the 
next  and  succeeding  generations.  This  is  what 
teachers  of  the  humanities  are  striving  to  do,  whether 
they  know  it  or  not,  and  whether  they  deal  with 
Greek  and  Latin,  or  with  French  or  German  or 
English.  But  as  is  shown  in  the  history  of  Europe, 
so  in  the  development  of  the  individual  American, 
the  basic  elements  of  this  ideal  are  most  promptly 
secured  through  direct  contact  with  Greek  and  Latin. 
When  a  foundation  has  been  laid  by  skilful  instruc- 
tion in  the  elements,  the  teachers  of  the  modern 
Christian  literatures  can  proceed  with  the  super- 
structure. 

The  destiny  of  Greek  and  Latin  as  a  means  of 
culture  primarily  rests  with  teachers  of  the  classics, 
and  secondarily  with  principals  of  schools  and  other 
men  of  influence  in  preparatory  education. 

It  is  important  that  teachers  of  the  classics  at  the 
present  time  should  feel  the  great  need  of  mutual 
recognition  and  support  among  all  the  friends  of 
culture  in  America.  But  perhaps  the  need  is  great- 
est as  between  scholars  in  the  ancient  languages  and 
students  of  the  modern  vernacular.  They  depend 
upon  each  other  in  performing  their  due  service  to 
the  State ;  for  a  study  of  the  ancient  classics  with  no 
attention  to  their  bearing  upon  modern  life  is  only 
less  futile  than  the  study  of  English  when  it  is  dis- 
sociated from  the  accumulated  experience  of  the  past. 
Yet  we  should  not  exclude  from  our  ideal  organiza- 
tion any  person  whatsoever  who  contributes  to  the 
enrichment  and  intensifying  of  human  life.     And, 


42  ENGLISH  AND  THE  CLASSICS 

perhaps,  all  told,  the  friends  of  real  as  opposed  to 
seeming  culture  are  not  so  few  as  teachers  of  the 
humanities  sometimes  imagine.  Few  or  many,  if 
they  would  but  make  their  cause  a  common  one,  they 
would  hold  the  fort  against  every  assault.  The  foes 
of  thorough  culture,  the  haters  of  ideas  and  ideals, 
are  many — how  often  are  they  professed  opponents 
of  Greek!  And  the  officious  heralds  of  a  shallow 
and  unmeaning  culture,  who  abhor  the  industry 
without  which  no  cultivation  ever  was  obtained,  may 
be  fraudulent  and  dangerous.  They  are  not,  and 
can  not  be,  at  one  in  their  efforts,  since  they  have 
nothing  positive  to  unite  them;  but  they  do  succeed 
in  deterring  young  people  who  are  ignorant  of  what 
is  good  and  what  is  bad  in  education  from  taking  up 
the  proper  studies  at  the  proper  time. 

The  foe  is  numerous  but  unorganized.  Upon  what 
ground  can  the  friends  of  culture  best  unite?  To 
what  practical  effort  can  the  teachers  of  the  humani- 
ties most  profitably  devote  their  superabundant 
strength?  Obviously  to  the  maintenance  and  ad- 
vancement of  the  study  of  Greek.  The  defence 
should  be  concentrated  where  the  attack  is  most  fre- 
quent. If  Greek  were  ultimately  to  disappear  from 
the  curriculum  of  all  the  schools,  Latin  in  no  long 
time  probably  would  make  a  similar  exit,  and  sooner 
or  later  the  serious  study  of  modem  languages  and 
literatures  would  be  discountenanced,  too.  Every 
effort  that  is  made  for  the  study  of  Greek  is  favor- 
able to  humane  learning  in  its  entirety.  If  Greek 
is  duly  cared  for,  Latin  will  take  care  of  itself,  and 


FEIENDS  OF  GEEEK  43 

SO  will  English.  If  the  teachers  of  all  these  subjects 
would  combine  for  the  rehabilitation  of  Greek,  no 
enemy  could  withstand  them.  The  program  is  simple. 
All  that  is  needed  is  a  measure  of  faith  like  that  of 
the  Centurion,  whose  suggestions  every  one  followed 
because  he  expected  it.  If  the  teacher  of  English, 
or  the  teacher  of  Latin,  were  to  advise  a  small  num- 
ber of  promising  young  men  aud  women  every  year 
to  study  Greek,  they  would  do  it. 

There  are,  indeed,  signs  of  hope  for  the  future. 
To  judge  from  the  utterances  of  university  presi- 
dents and  the  like,  the  cause  of  Greek  is  now  grow- 
ing stronger  in  the  eastern  section  of  the  country; 
the  conservative  South  has  never  lost  its  hold  upon 
the  subject;  and  the  great  Middle  West  is  imitative 
in  matters  of  education,  so  that  a  renaissance  of  any 
sort  in  New  England  would  ere  long  be  duplicated 
in  those  western  sections  which  draw  so  many  of  their 
teachers  from  the  older  universities.  One  thing,  at 
least,  is  very  significant.  Within  the  last  few  years, 
our  teachers  of  the  classics  have  become  noticeably 
less  apologetic  in  their  speech  and  attitude ;  they  are 
growing  more  and  more  courageous.  It  would  seem 
that  they  need  only  to  act  as  if  they  were  not  losing 
but  winning,  and  to  recognize  and  abet  their  friends 
in  other  subjects,  and  their  cause  might  be  saved. 
As  for  numerous  teachers  of  Latin,  they  should  evince 
a  higher  selfishness,  and  not  be  but  penny-wise.  Too 
many  have  been  merely  bent  upon  saving  themselves 
for  the  moment,  instead  of  rushing  to  defend  the 
point  where  the   enemy  has  been  most   successful. 


44  ENGLISH  AND  THE  CLASSICS 

And  as  for  the  teachers  of  the  modern  languages, 
they  should  act  upon  the  knowledge  they  possess; 
they  are  aware  that  a  first-hand  acquaintance  with 
the  classics  is  the  indispensable  prerequisite  to  any 
real  insight  into  Italian,  French,  and  Spanish,  as 
well  as  English  and  German. 

Principals  of  secondary  schools  doubtless  are  open 
to  reason,  and  the  arguments  in  favor  of  Greek  and 
Latin  are  many  and  varied,  virtually  all  of  them 
being  found  in  Professor  Kelsey's  collection  of 
papers,  by  several  hands,  in  the  volume  entitled 
Latin  and  Greek  in  American  Education  (published 
by  the  Macmillan  Company).  It  is  hard  to  believe 
that  any  one  could  resist  the  evidence  contained  in 
that  volume — for  example,  in  the  last  section,  Sym- 
posium VII,  Formal  Discipline,  under  the  headings. 
The  Doctrine  of  Formal  Discipline  in  the  Light  of 
the  Principles  of  General  Psychology  (by  James  R. 
Angell),  The  Effects  of  Training  on  Memory  (by 
W.  B.  Pillsbury),  and  The  Relation  of  Special  Train- 
ing to  General  Intelligence  (by  Charles  H.  Judd). 

To  every  man  who  has  a  voice  in  guiding  our 
secondary  education,  either  the  arguments  advanced 
by  those  who  have  studied  the  classics  to  some  pur- 
pose are  sound  and  convincing,  or  they  are  not; 
but  until  he  has  fairly  weighed  the  arguments,  the 
sensible  man  will  withhold  his  opinion.  If  he  is  in 
a  position  where  he  must  pass  judgment,  such  a  man 
will  take  pains  to  inform  himself.  For  nine  out  of 
ten  bright  boys  and  girls,  Greek  either  does  what  it 
is  said  to  do,  or  it  does  not.    We  may  leave  out  of 


AEGUMENTS  FOR  AND  AGAINST  GREEK         45 

account  the  rare  exception  of  a  tenth,  brilliant  mind 
that  is  said  to  be  incapable  of  learning  this  language. 
We  hear  of  such  minds,  and  one  is  inclined  to  think 
they  must  exist;  for  myself,  I  never  have  met  one. 
Capable  boys,  and  some  dull  ones,  too,  have  been 
able  to  master  the  subject  when  they  have  not  been 
spoiled  for  it  by  bad  teaching.  And  we  may  also 
disregard  the  incompetent  teacher  of  Greek,  the 
pedant  who  does  not  make  his  pupils  read  as  soon 
as  they  can,  and  lets  them  form  the  wretched  habit 
of  treating  the  language  as  if  it  were  a  Chinese 
puzzle,  or  the  ignoramus  who  himself  is  unable  to 
read  continuously  in  either  of  the  ancient  tongues. 
These  scattered  individuals  we  may  pass  by.  In 
general,  it  may  be  supposed,  the  teachers  of  the 
classics  are  as  well  trained  to  do  their  duty,  and 
perform  their  office  as  well,  on  the  whole,  as  any  other 
body  of  instructors  in  the  high  school.  If  not,  the 
solution  of  the  difficulty  lies  in  securing  better 
teachers  of  the  classics.  It  is  no  reasonable  solution 
to  throw  these  subjects  out  of  the  schools. 

To  return,  then:  either  Greek  affects  the  subse- 
quent career  of  the  pupil  as  is  said  to  be  the  case, 
or  it  does  not.  If  it  does  not,  we  are  free  to  neglect 
that  study  in  the  schools.  But  if  it  does  so  affect 
it,  we  are  bound  to  promote  the  study — unless  we  are 
willing  to  lose  our  own  self-respect.  If  one  never 
has  read  Greek,  or,  having  read  a  little  long  ago,  has 
forgotten  the  experience,  how  can  one  decide  the 
question  of  its  value  ?  No  doubt  the  books  of  Kelsey 
and  Zielinski^  would  help  the  formation  of  an  inde- 

*  Zielinski,  Our  BeM  to  Antiquity,  published  by  Routledge. 


46  ENGLISH  AND  THE  CLASSICS 

pendent  judgment;  but  it  is  desirable  to  look  at 
some  of  the  Greek  masterpieces  in  translation.  The 
hesitating  principal,  or  the  doubtful  member  of  the 
school  board,  might  read  the  RepuUic  of  Plato  in 
the  version  of  Jowett,  and  the  Nicomachean  Ethics 
of  Aristotle  as  translated  by  "Welldon,  and  then,  let 
us  say,  Jowett 's  rendering  of  the  Politics.  If,  being 
previously  unacquainted  with  those  fountains  of 
good  sense  and  lofty  inspiration,  one  were  to  find 
in  them  something  of  permanent  value,  it  would  be 
right  to  believe  the  persons  who  have  read  the  orig- 
inal as  well  as  the  pale  translation,  and  who  de- 
clare that  the  Greek  is  better  than  the  English  ver- 
sion. And  finally  the  principal  might  consider  what 
he  owes  to  the  boys  and  girls  whose  education  has 
been  entrusted  to  his  hands  by  his  nation  and  his 
Maker. 


IV 
GOOD  USAGE  ^ 

THE  following  remarks  concern  our  national 
language,  and  incidentally  the  study  of  Latin. 
Our  chief  topic  being,  not  simply  usage,  but  good 
usage,  we  may  begin  with  a  recognized  authority 
upon  the  subject,  and  one  who  is  likewise  an  ex- 
emplar in  his  practice.  In  the  Ars  Poetica  Horace 
observes : 

Yes,  words  long  faded  may  again  revive. 
And  words  may  fade  now  blooming  and  alive. 
If  Usage  wills  it  so,  to  whom  belongs 
The  rule,  the  law,  the  government  of  tongues. 

So  runs  the  spirited  rendering  by  Conington.  That 
we  may  be  sure  to  catch  the  unexpected  emphasis  of 
the  Latin  poet,  let  us  take  also  the  matter-of-fact 
translation  by  Wickham: 

'Many  a  term  which  has  fallen  from  use  shall  have 
a  second  birth,  and  those  shall  fall  that  are  now  in 
high  honor,  if  so  Usage  shall  will  it,  in  whose  hands 
is  the  arbitrament,  the  right  and  rule  of  speech.' 

^  Adapted  from  an  address  delivered  at  the  meeting  of  the 
American  Classical  League  in  Cincinnati,  June  24,  1920.  An- 
other version  of  the  paper,  but  under  the  same  title,  appears  in 
the  University  of  California  Chronicle  22.  259-269  (July,  1920). 
The  present  version  is  printed  with  the  kind  consent  of  the 
editor  of  the  Chronicle. 

47 


48  GOOD  USAGE 

It  is  often  supposed  that  this  tyrannous  usage  is 
the  blind  custom  of  the  mass  of  the  people — though 
we  find  nothing  in  Horace  to  warrant  the  supposi- 
tion; rather,  both  he  and  easily  observed  facts  seem 
to  indicate  that  the  arbiters  of  custom  are,  first  of 
all,  the  poets.  When  you  are  in  doubt  about  the 
meaning  or  pronunciation  of  a  word,  or  its  propriety, 
you  turn  to  a  dictionary — for  example,  to  the  New 
English  Dictionary  of  Sir  James  Murray  and  his 
fellows ;  there  you  see  how  Milton,  or  Gray,  or  Words- 
worth, or  Tennyson,  has  used  it;  and  ever  after  you 
try  to  use  the  word  in  that  way.  The  statement  of 
Horace  is  in  keeping  with  this  habit,  and  is  the  re- 
verse of  the  popular  notion.  He  means  that  the 
favorite  words  of  poetasters,  and  of  the  crowd,  are 
not  likely  to  endure.  He  means  that  the  diction  of 
great  poets,  on  the  other  hand,  has  great  vitality. 
In  the  standard  authors  of  an  earlier  day  he  has 
noted  words  and  phrases  that  seem  to  have  disap- 
peared, and  seem  to  be  replaced  by  new  and  popular 
terms,  but  which  come  to  life  again  in  the  verse  of 
a  well-read  genius  like  himself.  He  perceives  that 
good  words  of  an  elder  time  have  actually  come  to 
life  again  in  his  own  works.  He  knows  that  good 
usage  is  the  custom  of  men  of  good  taste,  and  exists 
through  the  consent  of  the  learned.  Thus,  if  we  may 
illustrate  his  contention  by  an  example  from  Eng- 
lish, the  adjective  cedarn  was  employed  by  Milton 
in  Comus — 

about  tlie  cedarn   alleys; 


POETS  EEVIVE  GOOD  WOEDS  49 

it  was  revived  by  Coleridge,  a  diligent  student  of 
Milton,  in  Kuhla  Khan — 

Down  the  green  hill,  athwart  a  cedarn  cover; 

then  Sir  Walter  Scott  took  it  from  Coleridge;  and 
through  these  two  poets  it  lives  on  in  modern  Eng- 
lish verse.  In  similar  wise  Lord  Tennyson  revived 
the  verb  hurgeon,  *to  bud,'  and  other  writers  have 
accepted  it  from  him. 

That  the  mass  of  the  people  have  an  influence  upon 
usage  it  is  perhaps  idle  to  doubt.  Certainly  the 
plain  man  likes  to  think  this  influence  very  great. 
And  not  the  plain  man  only;  one  American  pundit 
or  journalist  quotes  with  satisfaction  an  utterance 
of  the  philologist  Darmesteter : 

'Universal  suffrage  has  not  always  existed  in  poli- 
tics, but  it  has  always  existed  in  linguistics.  In 
matters  of  language  the  people  are  all-powerful  and 
infallible,  because  their  errors  sooner  or  later  estab- 
lish themselves  as  lawful.' 

Yet  the  process  of  growth  and  decay  that  Horace 
observed  in  the  poets  goes  on  in  the  masses  too,  only 
more  swiftly.  Like  leaves  in  the  autumn,  the  crowd 
dies,  to  make  room  for  another  generation;  and  its 
words  die  likewise.  In  all  this  world  of  change, 
nothing  dies  so  quickly  as  the  words  of  some  people. 
But  good  usage  implies  an  element  of  permanence 
in  language;  the  conception  itself  is  the  antithesis 
of  change.  It  is  not  the  crowd  that  can  truly  affirm : 
'Heaven  and  earth  shall  pass  away,  but  my  words 
shall  not  pass  away.'    Moreover,  when  a  word  that 


50  GOOD  USAGE 

has  seemed  to  perish  is  brought  back  to  life,  it  is  not 
brought  back  by  the  crowd ;  it  is  brought  back  to  the 
crowd  by  some  one  who  is  in  the  crowd,  but  not  of 
it.  Ordinarily  it  is  brought  back  to  the  rest  of  us 
by  a  poet,  or  at  all  events  through  the  instrumental- 
ity of  some  piece  of  literature  that  has  seemed  to 
merit  preservation  in  type  or  writing. 

Good  usage  clearly  is  something  better  and  more 
\'ital  than  average  usage.  The  people  who  say  'Lun- 
non,'  'Brummagem,'  'N'Yawk,'  'Cincinnatah,'  and 
*  Frisco, '  have  been,  are,  and  will  be,  far  more  numer- 
ous than  they  who  have  said,  now  say,  and  will  say, 
'London,'  'Birmingham,'  'New  York,'  'Cincinnati,* 
and  'San  Francisco.'  The  crowd  says  'this  much' 
and  'that  much';  good  usage,  and  good  syntax,  favor 
'thus  much'  and  'so  much.'  We  modify  an  adjec- 
tive, not  by  another  adjective,  but  by  an  adverb? 
And,  again,  we  do  not  use  an  adverb  to  modify  a 
noun,  nor  sign  ourselves,  'Sincerely,  "Warren  Wilson,' 
but  close  the  letter  with  'Sincerely  yours,'  and  then 
the  proper  noun.  The  crowd  says  'I  claim,'  instead 
of  'I  assert'  or  'I  contend';  it  'voices  its  sentiments,' 
instead  of  uttering  them.  In  common  usage  we  hear 
'address,'  'inquiry,'  'romance,'  'research';  in  good 
usage,  'address,'  'inquiry,'  'romance,'  'research.' 
Good  usage  does  not  tolerate  the  ugly  but  familiar 
combination  'research  work'  any  more  than  it  would 
tolerate  the  tautological  expression  'search  work.' 
In  common  usage  we  have  'verzhion, '  '  converzhion, ' 
'excurzhion,'  'Azhia,'  'Perzhia' — that  is,  with  the 
sound  of  zh,  not  sh.    Byron  properly  rhymes  'ver- 


GOOD  USAGE  AND  COMMON  USAGE      51 

sion'  and.  'Excursion'  with  *  assertion.'  In  these 
cases  the  voice  does  not  carry  through  from  vowel 
or  semivowel  to  vowel;  there  is  an  intervening  un- 
voiced consonant  as  at  the  end  of  the  word  hush. 
And  similarly,  in  spite  of  the  crowd,  we  should  say 
'Rossetti'  (not  'Rozeti')  and  'Renaissance'  (not 
'Renaizance'),  with  a  true  hiss,  made  by  the  breath 
alone,  not  with  a  buzz  produced  by  the  voice  too.  It 
is  unlikely  that  the  usage  of  the  many  will  ever 
make  the  pronunciation  'Rossetti'  wrong. 

Unfortunately  we  have  had  a  school  of  persons, 
who  ought  to  have  known  better,  advocating  the  no- 
tion that  the  usage  of  the  crowd,  the  usage  of  the 
many,  does  dominate,  and  should  dominate,  in  mat- 
ters of  expression.  The  late  Professor  Lounsbury, 
I  grieve  to  say,  was  one  of  these  'authorities';  and 
there  are  professed  advoca.tes  now  living,  not  merely 
of  average  usage,  but  of  bad  usage,  as  if  it  were  good 
usage.  However,  the  average  of  any  class — even  of 
the  class  we  call  'authorities' — falls  short,  and  some- 
times far  short,  of  the  good ;  nor  is  there  any  reason 
why  a  false  conception  of  democracy  should  be  im- 
ported into  the  realm  of  linguistic  usage.  "Words 
are  like  men  in  being  either  average,  or  below  the 
average,  or  above  the  average;  they  are  better  or 
worse  in  character  and  in  origin,  and  better  or  worse, 
too,  according  to  their  associations. 

Usage  is,  of  course,  the  usage  of  all,  when  some 
definite  custom  really  is  the  possession  of  all  those 
who  speak  a  given  language.  Some  part  of  our  cur- 
rent English  doubtless  is  the  common  property  of 


25  GOOD  USAGE 

every  one  who  knows  the  tongue.  But  at  most  only 
a  fraction  of  any  language  is  used  alike  by  all  who 
speak  it.  At  most  only  some  of  the  words  are  always 
pronounced  in  the  same  way;  only  certain  construc- 
tions are  common  to  all  sections  of  the  country  and 
all  stages  in  the  scale  of  society.  Within  limits,  then, 
we  do  have  to  consider  the  usage  of  the  whole  num- 
ber, as  against  the  idiosyncrasies  of  the  individual. 
But  we  must  distinguish  between  the  usage  of  the 
whole  number  and  the  common  practice  of  any  frac- 
tion, large  or  small,  of  that  whole  number.  "What 
we  call  the  crowd,  or  the  many,  are  not  all.  How- 
ever large  a  part,  they  are  not  the  whole. 

The  whole  is,  in  fact,  made  up  of  parts,  or  groups, 
some  of  which  have  more  power  in  linguistic  usage 
thaxi  others.  "When  there  is  a  possibility  of  choice, 
the  voices  or  votes  are  not  all  equally  telling.  Of 
all  the  voices  of  men  in  Homeric  times,  only  the 
voice  that  is  heard  in  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey  has 
carried  down  to  us.  Now  scholars  are  pretty  well 
agreed  that  the  diction  of  the  Homeric  poems  is  not 
a  popular  language  at  all;  it  was  a  special  diction 
devised  for  a  special  kind  of  verse.  Of  all  the  voices 
that  were  heard  in  the  age  of  Pericles,  only  a  few 
have  come  to  us — the  voices  of  the  philosophers,  his- 
torians, orators,  and  poets.  Among  the  Romans,  the 
voice  of  Cicero  and  that  of  Virgil  have  produced  the 
most  widespread  and  distinct  echoes  in  all  subse- 
quent times.  From  the  fourth  century  a.d.  the  ca- 
dences of  Jerome  reached  the  ears  of  our  northern 
ancestors  at  the  end  of  the  sixth,  when  the  mission- 


TELLING  VOICES  53 

aries  brought  his  Latin  translation  of  the  Bible  to 
pagan  England;  nor  have  those  cadences  ceased  to 
resound  at  the  present  time,  whether  in  the  Latin 
Bible  or  the  English.  In  our  own  day,  the  influence 
of  the  few  continues  to  be  relatively  more  powerful 
in  linguistic  matters  than  the  influence  of  the  many ; 
and  these  few  have  generally  had,  among  other 
things,  a  training  in  Latin.  If  this  truth  is  not 
evident  now,  future  years  will  make  it  so. 

Among  the  groups  that  compose  the  entire  mass  of 
speakers  or  writers  (the  illiterate,  the  half-taught, 
and  the  well-taught,  all  taken  together),  the  follow- 
ing are  very  influential :  public  orators — for  example, 
clergymen,  educators,  and  statesmen;  singers;  schol- 
ars— for  example.  Sir  James  Murray  and  the  other 
editors  of  the  New  English  Dictionary ;  poets — for 
example,  Mr.  Kipling,  who  has  studied  Horace,  and 
whose  words  are  often  more  fully  alive  in  the  ear 
of  the  reader  than  are  the  words  of  the  reader  him- 
self. Nor  may  we  forget  the  typesetters,  the  men 
who  actually  print  the  books,  who  exert  an  enor- 
mous influence,  though  one  that  is  seldom  noticed, 
upon  linguistic  usage.  The  best  of  them  know  Latin. 
They  are  very  conservative,  and,  even  without  the 
help  of  the  poets,  orators,  and  the  rest,  would  do 
much  to  maintain  the  purity  of  the  English  lan- 
guage. Think  of  the  numbers  of  them  in  the  British 
Isles,  and  the  British  colonies,  from  Canada  to  South 
Africa,  India,  Australia,  and  New  Zealand — not  to 
mention  the  United  States  of  America.  The  Ameri- 
can 'Simplified  Spelling'  Board,  a  radical  and  artifi- 
S 


5i  GOOD  USAGE 

cial  body,  has  accomplished  nothing  in  the  face  of 
the  silent,  natural,  habitual  conservatism  of  printers 
from  Edinburgh  and  Oxford  to  Calcutta  and  Mel- 
bourne. Publishers,  too,  are  more  likely  to  study 
and  preserve  good  usage  than  to  indulge  in  innova- 
tions. 

In  the  long  run,  we  may  say  that  all  the  influen- 
tial groups  have  studied  Latin,  if  not  Greek  as  well, 
and  that  all  are  conservative,  especially  the  frater- 
nity of  poets.  Thus  Wordsworth  objected  to  the 
use  of  the  nouns  spring  and  autumn  as  adjectives, 
vehemently  advocating  the  employment  of  the  true 
adjectives  vernal  and  autumnal  instead.  And,  quite 
in  the  spirit  of  Horace,  he  remarks :  *  "  Joying, ' ' 
for  joy  or  joyance,  is  not  to  my  taste;  indeed,  I  ob- 
ject to  such  liberties  upon  principle.  "We  should 
soon  have  no  language  at  all  if  the  unscrupulous 
coinage  of  the  present  day  were  allowed  to  pass,  and 
become  a  precedent  for  the  future.  One  of  the  first 
duties  of  a  writer  is  to  ask  himself  whether  his 
thought,  feeling,  or  image  cannot  be  expressed  by 
existing  words  or  phrases,  before  he  goes  about  creat- 
ing new  terms,  even  when  they  are  justified  by  the 
analogies  of  the  language. '  ^  Horace  allows  the  po€t 
to  invent  a  new  term  only  under  stress  of  necessity, 
and  in  that  case  advises  him  to  derive  his  new  term 
by  studying  the  best  sources  of  the  language.  For 
him  the  best  source  was  Greek;  for  us  the  best 
sources  are  Latin,  Greek,  and  Old  English. 

People  like  to  think  that  what  is  bad  usage  in  one 

1  Letters  of  the  Wordsworth  Family,  ed.  bj  "Knight,  2.  397. 


GOOD   SENSE   AND   PAEADOX  55 

generation  becomes  good  in  another,  and  take  pleas- 
ure in  noting  that  expressions  once  condemned  by 
careful  writers  have  eventually  become  established 
in  the  language.  But  nearly  every  one  likes  para- 
dox, while  few  caxe  to  study  the  efforts  by  which  a 
Chaucer,  a  Tindale,  a  Spenser,  a  Gray,  and  a  Words- 
worth have  purified  the  English  tongue.  It  is,  of 
course,  true  that  a  number  of  words  to  which  Swift 
objected  are  now  tolerated;  but  more  noteworthy 
are  the  expressions  that  have  been  approved  by  the 
judicious,  and  have  remained  in  use.  Meanwhile  it 
is  equally  true  that  chance  coinages  seldom  long 
survive.     Mr.  Kipling's  'scumfish,'  for  example,  in 

.  .  .  leaping  lines  that  scumfish  through  the  pines, 

has  not,  it  would  seem,  taken  root;  so  far  as  I  have 
observed,  he  himself  used  it  but  once,  in  the  Road 
Song  of  the  Bandar-log.  The  truth  is  that  most  of 
what  is  bad  or  casual  in  one  age  does  not  become 
legal  tender  in  the  next;  the  chances  are  against  it. 
The  concerted  action  of  scholars  and  literary  men  in 
general  is  against  it.  When  education  in  a  country 
is  systematic  and  good,  the  tendency  of  any  language 
is  to  improve,  partly  by  additions  critically  made, 
partly  by  critical  elimination.  Moreover,  slang  dies 
a  natural  death  so  quickly  that  a  man  who  has  been 
absent  for  two  or  three  years  in  a  foreign  country 
will  not  half  understand  what  the  young  folk  are 
saying  when  he  returns  to  his  own  land  and  attends 
to  the  new  ephemeral  growth.  The  slang  of  five  years 
ago  is  for  the  most  part  utterly  dead,  and  never  will 


56  GOOD  USAGE 

be  heard  again.  Good  English  and  good  Latin  re- 
main steadfast;  nor  are  they  likely  ever  to  be  dis- 
joined. 

People  are  fond,  too,  of  showing  that  what  is 
called  bad  usage  can  all  be  explained  by  natural 
laws;  that  it  has  its  origin  in  psychology,  or  in  the 
earlier  stages  of  the  language,  or  that  it  has  a  paral- 
lel in  the  good  usage  of  another  tongue.  The  double 
negative  of  illiterate  English,  they  say,  is  only  the 
counterpart  of  the  double  negative  in  Attic  Greek. 
Well,  'He  didn't  know  nothing  about  Latin'  may 
be  literally  rendered  into  Greek  that  is  good;  but 
it  isn't  good  English.  It  is  bad  English  for  the 
reason  that  good  writers  do  not  use  it.  That  it  can 
be  explained  by  natural  laws  does  not  help,  for 
everything  that  happens  can  be  so  explained.  The  ac- 
tions of  a  thief  have  a,  natural  cause.  Bad  manners 
and  bad  conduct  of  every  sort,  filthy  language  and 
base  thoughts,  as  well  as  bad  grammar  and  false 
pronunciation,  can  all  be  explained  by  something  or 
other.  According  to  Euripides,  Menander,  and 
Saint  Paul,  it  is  evil  communications  that  corrupt 
good  manners;  and  the  term  includes  every  kind  of 
bad  usage.  To  lay  bare  the  causes  of  a  phenomenon 
does  not  justify  our  acceptance  of  any  practice  as  a 
norm.  And  further,  if  illiterate  English  on  occasion 
will  turn  into  tolerable  Greek  and  Latin,  slovenly 
English  can  more  often  be  rendered  by  force  into 
slovenly  Greek  and  Latin.  But  more  important  is 
the  fact  that  the  best  of  Plato  can  often  be  translated 
word  for  word  into  the  best  English;  and  yet  more 


GOOD  USAGE  IS  SECOND  NATUEE  57 

important  is  the  fact  that  they  who  have  practised 
Greek  and  Latin  composition,  and  have  rendered 
Plato  and  Cicero  into  English,  write  a  better  Eng- 
lish style  of  their  own  than  they  who  have  not  en- 
joyed this  sort  of  literary  education. 

Good  usage  also  is  natural,  and  has  its  origin  and 
laws.  It  is  nature  improved  by  art;  and  art  like- 
wise has  its  origin  and  laws.  Good  usage  is  the 
custom  of  the  trained  writer  and  speaker.  It  is  an 
art  that  has  become  second  nature.  It  is  not  the 
impulse  or  habit  of  the  old  Adam,  but  the  wisdom 
of  an  Adam  regenerate.  Like  all  other  arts,  it  is 
based  upon  a  study  of  nature.  The  student  of  lan- 
guage aims  to  find  out  what  nature  a,t  her  best  is 
trying  to  produce ;  and  this  he  strives  to  perpetuate, 
being  himself  one  of  the  agencies  in  the  survival  of 
the  fittest.  Words  are  natural  forms,  like  living 
animals — like  mice  and  such  small  deer.  You  may 
clip  their  tails  for  a  generation,  or  for  more  than 
one — and  the  next  generation  will  have  tails  of  the 
old  length,  if  usage  so  determines.  Nature  is  too 
strong  for  the  'simplified'  spellers.  It  is  not  too 
strong  for  the  student  of  Greek  and  Latin.  It  was 
not  too  strong  for  Milton,  who  made  extensive  collec- 
tions for  a  thesaurus  of  classical  Latin  usage.  With 
nature  the  poet  joins  forces,  and  so  do  the  editors 
of  the  New  English  Dictionary,  who  record  the  lead- 
ing facts  of  our  language  as  these  are  evident  in  the 
best  poets  and  prose  writers.  Nature  was  not  too 
strong  for  the  conservative  Horace;  nor  for  Words- 
worth, who  remarked  that  a  poet  would  be  likely  to 


58  GOOD  USAGE 

know  more  than  the  average  reader  concerning  the 
history  of  words.  The  arbiter  of  good  usage  must 
study  the  history  of  the  language,  so  as  to  discover 
what  is  the  newest  of  the  old  and  the  oldest  of  the 
new — for  that  is  the  right  custom  of  speech. 

Not  only  so,  but  he  must  study  the  languages 
from  which  descending  streams  have  contributed  to 
the  powerful  current  of  good  English,  that  main 
current  which  runs  unsullied  through  the  troubled 
waters  of  bad  usage;  for  there  have  always  been 
poets  enough  to  serve  as  a  clear  channel.  He  must, 
above  all,  study  Old  English  and  Latin,  and  Chaucer, 
that  well  of  English  undefiled,  and  the  main  poets, 
Spenser,  Shakespeare,  Milton,  and  Wordsworth,  who 
have  drawn  water  from  that  well. 

Our  language,  called  English  (not  'Anglo-Saxon') 
by  the  Germanic  tribes,  the  Angles,  Jutes,  and 
Saxons,  who  brought  it  to  England,  originally  con- 
sisted of  three  main  dialects.  These  were  severally 
domesticated  in  the  north-eastern,  south-eastern,  and 
south-central  parts  of  England  bordering  on  the 
North  Sea  and  the  English  Channel.  Those  tribes 
had  not  been  quite  untouched  by  Christianity  and 
Roman  commerce  in  their  Continental  home  on  the 
Danish  peninsula  and  in  adjacent  districts  washed 
by  the  German  Ocean.  But  on  that  casual  contact 
we  need  not  dwell.  Yet  we  may  recall  that  they 
brought  with  them  from  the  Continent  to  England 
a  set  of  letters,  the  Runic  alphabet,  which  the  entire 
body  of  Germanic  tribes  had  long  since  derived  from 
Greece  and  Rome.    On  the  whole,  however,  they  were 


THE  ROMAN  MISSIONAEIES  59 

essentially  unlettered,  and  essentially  pagan,  when 
they  began  to  harry  the  island  of  Britain  about  the 
middle  of  the  fifth  century.  When  they  had  been 
settling  there  for  perhaps  one  hundred  and  fifty 
years,  and  were  established  in  the  land,  there  came 
among  them  a  band  of  Christian  missionaries,  gathered 
from  various  Mediterranean  countries,  and  sent  from 
Rome.  The  first  of  these  missionaries  was  August- 
ine, with  a  good  Latin  name;  and  the  most  impor- 
tant of  those  who  immediately  followed  him  were 
Mellitus,  Justus,  Paulinus,  and  Rufinianus.  They 
were  sent  by  Pope  Gregory,  who,  according  to  Bede, 
'was  by  nation  a  Roman,  .  .  .  deducing  his  race  from 
ancestors  that  were  not  only  noble,  but  religious.' 
Of  the  early  missionaries,  all,  of  course,  knew  Latin, 
and  some  knew  Greek.  Their  first  task  was  to  learn 
English,  and  to  write  it  in  the  Latin  alphabet ;  their 
second,  to  adapt  the  resources  of  English  to  the  ex- 
pression of  ideas  brought  from  the  Mediterranean. 
Within  seventy  years  they  had  done  the  fundamental 
work  for  the  transformation  of  the  English  race 
from  unlettered  pagans  into  civilized  Christians. 
Without  the  missionaries  and  their  converts  there 
would  have  been  no  English  literature,  for  there 
would  have  been  no  records,  no  study,  no  safe  tradi- 
tion, no  development  of  style.  Without  the  mis- 
sionaries and  their  Latin  training  we  should  have 
had  no  standard  of  good  usage  in  English.  Without 
them  we  now  should  have  no  such  language  as 
modern  English,  and  possibly  no  homogeneous  speech 
whatsoever,  but  a  set  of  relatively  crude  dialects. 


60  GOOD  USAGE 

But  for  the  missionaries  and  their  Latin,  the  thought 
of  Greece,  the  ideals  of  Palestine,  might  never  have 
entered  into  English  civilization.  Pope  Gregory  was 
right  when  he  said : 

'Behold,  a  tongue  of  Britain,  which  only  knew 
how  to  utter  barbarous  language,  has  long  since 
begun  to  resound  the  Hebrew  Alleluia.  Behold,  the 
once  swelling  ocean  now  serves  prostrate  at  the  feet 
of  the  saints ;  and  its  barbarous  motions,  which  earthly 
princes  could  not  subdue  with  the  sword,  are  now, 
through  the  fear  of  God,  bound  by  the  mouths  ot 
priests  with  words  only;  and  he  that  when  an  in- 
fidel stood  not  in  awe  of  fighting  troops,  now,  a  be- 
liever, fears  the  tongues  of  the  humble. '  ^ 

The  history  of  good  usage,  then,  goes  back  to  the 
Mediterranean;  and  good  usage  as  a  whole  repre- 
sents the  progress  of  civilization  from  Homer  and 
the  Old  Testament  down  to  the  present  day.  On  the 
classical  side  it  represents  the  cumulative  effort  of 
the  Greek  poets  and  scholars,  resulting  in  Attic 
Greek,  and  the  effort  of  Roman  poets  and  scholars, 
the  inheritors  of  Greek  culture,  culminating  in  Cicero 
and  Virgil.  The  line  continues,  then,  let  us  say, 
through  the  Church  Fathers  and  the  Latin  gramma- 
rians to  Saint  Jerome,  a  pupil  of  the  grammarian  Do- 
natus,  schooled  in  all  the  classical  learning  of  his  time, 
yet  with  the  fervor  of  a  Hebrew  prophet,  and  the 
first  translator  of  the  Bible  whom  we  know  by  name. 
The  missionaries  took  to  England  a  knowledge  of 

*  Moralia  27.  11,  quoted  by  Bed©  in  his  Ecclesiastical  History 
of  England  2.  1 ;  see  Cook  and  Tinker,  Select  Translations  from 
Old  English  Prose,  p.  28. 


JEEOME  AND  THE  VULGATE  BIBLE     61 

the  classical  Latin  authors,  and  some  knowledge  of 
Greek.  They  doubtless  very  early  imported  the 
grammar  of  Donatus,  together  with  Priscian.  But, 
with  the  actual  volumes  of  the  Latin  authors,  they 
brought  to  England  the  most  influential  book  for 
post-classical  European  civilization  that  ever  was 
produced,  Jerome's  translation  of  the  Bible  into 
Latin.  Out  of  this,  through  a  series  of  adaptations 
and  partial  translations  into  Old  and  Middle  Eng- 
lish, there  subsequently  arose  the  most  influential  of 
all  books  upon  modem  English  culture,  the  Author- 
ized Version  of  the  Bible,  the  Bible  of  King  James. 
In  the  Vulgate  of  Jerome — for  example,  in  the 
Book  of  Lamentations — the  cadences  of  Ciceronian 
and  Attic  eloquence  unite  with  the  substance  of 
Christian  and  Hebraic  thought,  and,  on  the  whole, 
classic  usage  bends  only  in  so  far  as  is  necessary  to 
express  conceptions  that  had  not  been  familiar  to 
ancient  Rome.  Let  a  single  instance  suffice.  The 
Romans,  like  the  English  in  their  pagan  state,  virtu- 
ally never  attained  to  the  conception  of  monotheism. 
When  they  prayed,  they  addressed  the  immortal  gods 
in  the  vocative  plural ;  or  they  addressed  some  indi- 
vidual deity,  as  Hercules  or  Jupiter,  using  the  voca- 
tive singular  of  his  particular  name.  Because  they 
worshiped  gods  many,  they  had  no  vocative  singu- 
lar from  the  nominative  deus.  Accordingly,  when 
Jerome  came  to  translate  the  opening  of  the  Fifty- 
first  Psalm,  'Have  mercy  upon  me,  0  God!'  there 
was  no  classical  usage  that  he  could  follow;  he  was 
forced  to  make  use  of  the  nominative  singular  as  a 


62  GOOD  USAGE 

vocative:  'Miserere  mei,  Dens.'  The  entire  history 
of  civilization  here  converges  on  a  point  in  usage. 
For  the  new  conception  the  translator  did  not  invent 
a  new  word,  nor  did  he  devise  a  new  form  by 
analogy.  We  find  him  as  conservative  as  circum- 
stances permitted  him  to  be;  he  makes  a  word  and 
a  form  already  in  existence  answer  his  purpose.  His 
'DeitrS'  is  the  first  instance  in  Latin  of  an  appeal  to 
the  one  Divine  Being  in  the  vocative  singular. 

The  Vulgate,  then,  was  the  principal  gift  of  Latin 
scholarship  to  the  English  race — to  the  Angles,  Jutes, 
and  Saxons,  with  Frisians  and  others  intermixed. 
As  the  race  became  politically  more  unified,  and 
also  more  thoroughly  permeated  by  Christian  civili- 
zation, the  centre  of  government  and  of  intellectual 
life  moved,  in  the  course  of  events,  from  the  north- 
east to  the  south-west,  and  the  three  strains  of  the 
native  language  tended  to  unite  in  the  south-mid- 
land district,  while  the  influence  of  classical  and  ec- 
clesiastical Latin  remained  constant  throughout. 
Eventually  the  south-midland  dialect,  with  admix- 
tures from  the  other  two,  became  the  English  lan- 
guage proper,  taking  shape  as  a  fairly  homogeneous 
unit  in  what  has  become  the  great  centre  of  Eng- 
lish population  and  culture,  notable  for  London  and 
the  two  main  seats  of  classical  learning,  Oxford  and 
Cambridge.  In  this  south-central  district  at  the  close 
of  the  Middle  Ages  we  find  the  two  scholars  and 
great  writers,  Chaucer  and  Wyclif  (both  of  them 
students  of  Latin),  who,  more  than  any  others,  gave 
form  to  that  English  tongue  which  has  spread  to  the 


THE  HISTORY  OF  GOOD  USAGE  63 

ends  of  the  earth.  Though  the  process  of  develop- 
ment in  earlier  stages  was  gradual,  leading  up  to 
the  fourteenth  century,  we  may  definitely  take  this 
century  of  Chaucer,  Langland,  the  unidentified 
author  of  the  Pearl,  and  the  beginnings  of  the  Eng- 
lish drama,  as  the  critical  age  for  the  supremacy  of 
the  midland  dialect,  and  the  formation  of  modern 
English.  To  the  poetry  of  Chaucer  and  the  "Wyclif 
translation  of  the  Bible  we  usually  give  the  credit 
for  fixing  the  language;  but  the  age  as  a  whole  was 
one  of  extraordinary  originating  power — in  this  re- 
spect incomparable  in  English  history — and  full  of 
literary  activity.  Witness  the  genius  of  Richard 
Rolle,  and  the  high  degree  of  talent  in  Gower,  both 
of  whom  wrote  with  equal  ease  in  Latin  and  English. 
It  was  also  the  most  important  epoch  for  the  assimila- 
tion in  our  language  of  words  of  Latin  origin. 

The  language  which  then  became  unified,  and 
dominant  in  England,  was  later  moulded  and  made 
flexible  on  the  Elizabethan  and  Jacobean  stage,  in 
the  time  of  Shakespeare  and  of  the  Authorized  Ver- 
sion of  the  Bible,  while  the  colonial  expansion  of 
Great  Britain  was  beginning  over-seas.  'The  works 
of  the  old  English  dramatists,'  said  "Wordsworth, 
'are  the  gardens  of  our  language.'  Of  the  bond  be- 
tween the  Authorized  Version  and  earlier  English 
translations  of  the  Scriptures,  and  between  these  and 
the  Vulgate,  I  have  already  spoken.  On  the  influ- 
ence, deep  and  wide,  of  the  Authorized  Version  upon 
English  usage  it  is  needless  to  dwell.  A  well-known 
authority  says:  'The  elevation  and  nobility  of  Bibli- 


64  GOOD  USAGE 

cal  diction,  assisted  by  its  slightly  archaic  tinge, 
have  a  tendency  to  keep  all  English  style  above  mean- 
ness and  triviality.'  In  the  words  of  Coleridge,  'in- 
tense study  of  the  Bible  will  keep  any  writer  from 
being  vulgar  in  point  of  style.'  But  we  must  note 
that  this  age  of  Elizabeth  and  James,  again,  was  one 
in  which  strictly  classical  studies  had  a  very  large 
share  in  providing  standards  of  good  usage.  The 
eloquence  of  Bacon,  for  example,  comes  partly  from 
the  Latin  Bible,  partly  from  Tacitus,  partly  from 
Cicero. 

The  language  handed  down  by  the  Elizabethan 
court  and  drama,  and  by  the  preachers  of  the  Re- 
formation, that  spoken  language  which  is  the  basis 
of  the  written,  virtually  took  final  shape  in  the  drama 
of  the  Restoration ;  and  the  spelling,  too,  was  practi- 
cally fixed  in  the  same  period  of  Charles  the  Second ; 
while  Latin  continued  to  be  the  groundwork  of  a 
literary  education.  Addison,  the  eighteenth  century 
in  general,  only  refined  our  prose  in  small,  though 
not  insignificant  details.  At  the  end  of  the  century 
it  was  at  length  possible  to  make  an  authoritative 
dictionary  of  modern  English,  that  of  Samuel  John- 
son, an  accomplished  Latinist. 

Since  then,  the  language  has  not,  indeed,  remained 
stationary ;  there  has  been  an  increase  in  the  number 
of  words  to  be  found  in  a  dictionary — but  mostly  of 
technical  words  derived  from  Greek  and  Latin.  There 
has  been  some  increase,  too,  in  the  flexibility  of  speech 
and  writing.  Still,  the  last  considerable  reaction  in 
the  history  of  the  language  took  the  shape  of  a  re- 


WOEDSWORTH  AND  THE  BIBLE  65 

turn  to  earlier  standards.  The  movement  is  rightly 
associated  with  the  effort  of  Wordsworth  to  imitate 
the  diction  of  'real  men,'  and  to  purge  away  the 
insincerities  that  had  crept  into  English  verse  through 
the  influence  of  Pope.  Wordsworth  himself  gave 
some  color  to  the  notion  that  he  was  experimenting 
with  the  language  actually  used  in  his  own  time  by 
humble  and  rustic  persons.  His  'real  men,'  how- 
ever, knew  the  English  Bible  and  Liturgy  by  heart; 
he  eliminated  the  crudities  of  rural  speech  by  a  stand- 
ard derived  from  his  studies  in  the  history  of  words ; 
and  when  his  usage  at  any  point  was  called  in  ques- 
tion, he  defended  himself  by  an  appeal  to  the  usage 
of  the  earlier  poets.  With  respect  to  diction  he 
mainly  succeeded  in  bringing  back  the  simplicity 
and  directness  of  Biblical  English  to  poetical  style, 
and  in  restoring  to  favor  many  words  and  phrases 
of  permanent  value  from  Chaucer,  Spenser,  Shake- 
speare, and  Milton,  and  not  a  few  of  the  minor  poets. 
His  practice  demonstrated  that  the  usage  of  the  com- 
mon people  is  a  kind  of  material  furnished  by  na- 
ture, which  the  poet  moulds  by  conscious  art  into 
a  new  creation.  He  also  observed  that  nature  is  at 
work  in  the  minds  of  mighty  poets. 

The  last  great  fact  in  the  history  of  good  usage 
is  the  production  of  the  New  English  Dictionary 
(now  almost  complete)  at  Oxford,  England,  in  the 
midland  district  where  the  language  was  formed, 
and  at  the  home  of  English  classical  learning. 

Let  us  go  back  a  little.  The  eighteenth  century 
is  especially  important  for  America,  since  the  chief 


QQ  GOOD  USAGE 

differences  that  we  need  to  consider  between  English 
and  American  usage  then  arose — not  in  America  so 
much  as  in  England  itself.  We  have  to  study  the 
English  usage  of  that  century  if  we  wish  to  know 
whether  our  present  American  usage,  when  there  is 
a  difference,  is  justified.  Take,  for  example,  the 
word  labor,  and  other  words  which  the  English  now 
uniformly  spell  with  the  ending  -our.  Gray  (a  very 
careful  writer)  and  his  age  spell  them  in  either  way, 
without  betraying  a  preference.  But  since  English 
has  taken  many  of  them  directly  from  Latin  rather 
than  French,  since  there  is  ample  authority  in  the 
best  writers  of  the  eighteenth  century  for  spelling 
them  like  the  Latin,  since  this  is  simpler  and  more 
natural,  and  since  there  is  no  good  reason  for  spell- 
ing them  otherwise  than  labor,  color,  humor,  etc., 
we  are  more  than  justified  in  adhering  to  what  is 
called  the  American  orthography.  Ours  really  are 
eigtheenth-century  English  forms ;  and  they  are  Latin 
forms.  Possibly  we  should  make  an  exception  of 
Saviour,  but  on  grounds  of  the  best  usage,  and  not 
arbitrarily. 

Let  us  take  a  final  illustration:  for  ever — written 
or  printed  as  two  words,  and  not,  as  so  often  is  done 
in  America,  in  one.  You  cannot  very  well  print  it 
as  one  in  the  most  familiar  case  of  all,  namely,  in 
the  Lord's  Prayer;  there  you  must  print  or  write  it 
'for  ever  and  ever.'    So  Keats  gives  it: 

A  thing  of  beauty  is  a  joy  for  ever. 

In  the  eighteenth  century  it  has  been  noted  once  as 
a  single  word,  in  the  poet  Falconer.     Shelley    (or 


CALVERLEY'S  ' FOBEVEB '  67 

his  printer),  in  the  nineteenth,  gives  it  sometimes 
as  one,  sometimes  as  two.  But  at  present  we  may 
distinguish  the  artist  in  language  from  the  man  who 
is  not  so  artistic,  by  his  use  of  for  ever,  centre, 
theatre,  metre,  thus  much,  so  much,  some  one,  any 
one,  every  one,  and  the  like. 

Taken  singly,  such  matters  appear  trifling;  but 
perfection  is  made  up  of  minutiae — and  perfection 
is  no  trifle.  Good  usage  is  a  thing  of  beauty.  Cal- 
verley  did  not  think  the  orthography  of  for  ever  a 
trifle,  since  he  wrote  nine  Horatian  stanzas  on  it: 

Forever 
Forever !    'T  is  a  single  word ! 

Our  rude  forefathers  deemed  it  two; 
Can  you  imagine  so  absurd 
A    view  ? 

Forever!     What  abysms  of  woe 

The  word  reveals,  what  frenzy,  what 
Despair!     For  ever  (printed  so) 
Did  not. 

It  looks,  ah  me!  how  trite  and  tame; 

It  fails  to  sadden  or  appal 
Or  solace — it  is  not  the  same 
At  all. 

O  thou  to  whom  it  first  occurred 

To  solder  the  disjoined,  and  dower 
Thy  native  language  with  a  word 
Of  power: 


68  GOOD  USAGE 

We  bless  thee!    Whether  far  or  near 
Thy  dwelling,  whether  dark  or  fair 
Thy  kingly  brow,  is  neither  here 
Nor  there. 

But  in  men's  hearts  shall  be  thy  throne, 

Wliile  the  great  pulse  of  England  beats: 
Thou  coiner  of  a  word  unknown 
To  Keats! 

And  nevermore  must  printer  do 
As  men  did  longago;  but  run 
*  For  '  into  '  ever,'  bidding  two 
Be  one. 

Forever!     Passion-fraught,  it  throws 

O'er  the  dim  page  a  gloom,  a  glamour ; 
It 's  sweet,  it 's  strange ;  and  I  suppose 
It 's  grammar. 

Forever !    'T  is  a  single  word ! 

And  yet  our  fathers  deemed  it  two. 
Nor  am  I  confident  they  erred; 
Are  you? 

The  phrase  for  ever  represents  the  two  words  in 
ceternum,  an  expression  repeatedly  used  in  the  Vul- 
gate, a  Latin  book  brought  into  England  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  history  of  our  race  and  our  literature. 
Latin  has  been  read  and  written  by  men  of  English 
speech  from  the  Old  English  period  till  our  own  day. 
The  influence  has  been  absolutely  continuous,  and 
on  the  whole  invaluable.     I  have  no  desire  to  mini- 


THE  LATIN  ELEMENT  IN  ENGLISH  69 

mize  the  beauty  and  utility  of  the  native  element  in 
our  language,  or  to  slight  any  other  element  such  as 
Greek.  Rather  I  would  suggest  that  these  elements 
are  so  interwoven  that  they  must  be  studied  together 
by  any  one  who  desires  to  perpetuate  standards  of 
good  linguistic  usage.  Yet  it  is  proper  to  emphasize 
the  fact  that,  in  the  main,  the  relation  of  Latin  to 
English  has  been  that  of  conquering  and  dominat- 
ing form  upon  a  plastic,  vital  matter.  If  Old  Eng- 
lish is  the  mother  of  our  present  tongue,  a  mother 
to  be  loved  and  cherished,  Latin  has  been  its  father, 
a  father  to  be  revered  and  consulted.  There  are 
other  strains  in  our  speech,  but  the  original  wedding 
was  between  Old  English  and  Latin.  And  there 
has  been  constant  intermarriage  between  these  two 
lines  ever  since. 

Here  is  one  of  the  products.  For  a  choice  speci- 
men of  virile  English,  I  present  the  following  utter- 
ance of  Ben  Jonson  on  good  usage.     He  says: 

'Pure  and  neat  language  I  love,  yet  plain  and 
customary. ' 

That  is  the  kind  of  sentence  people  call  good 
straightforward  Anglo-Saxon.  Yet  here  the  words 
of  native  origin  are  the  least  significant;  of  the 
really  descriptive  words,  pure  goes  back  to  Latin 
purus,  neat  to  Latin  nitidus,  plain  to  Latin  planus, 
language  to  Latin  lingua,  and  customary  to  Latin 
consuetudinarius.  It  is  impossible  to  study  English 
without  a  knowledge  of  Latin.  Shakespeare  is  said  to 
have  had  little  of  it ;  but  he  had  more  than  the  classes 
that  nowadays  read  him  in  this  country.  It  is  said 
6 


70  GOOD  USAGE 

that  Lincoln  had  less  than  Shakespeare ;  but  he  knew 
the  Latin  terms  used  in  his  practice  of  law,  and  he 
saw  to  it  that  his  son  was  not  deprived  of  a  classical 
education.  Milton  wrote  enviable  Latin,  both  prose 
and  verse,  before  he  attained  to  the  purest  English 
style  developed  by  any  of  our  great  poets.  And  he 
calls  barbarism  'a  destructive  intestine  enemy  to 
genius,'  and  takes  careless  speech  as  the  mark  of  an 
indolent  mind  '  already  long  prepared  for  any  amount 
of  servility. '  It  is  his  way  of  saying  that  bad  usage 
corrupts  good  manners.  In  his  day  the  cure  was 
the  study  of  Latin,  which  would  still  be  effective,  if 
our  schools  chose  to  make  it  so.  In  addition,  we  now 
have  the  New  English  Dictionary  as  the  great  anti- 
dote to  bad  language.  It  records  the  thrilling  voices 
of  a  noble  past,  and  indicates  the  course  of  good 
usage  in  the  future.  But  one  cannot  consult  it  to 
the  best  advantage  without  a  Latin  dictionary  at 
one's  elbow. 

Actually,  every  one  believes  in  good  usage.  Little 
children  are  quick  to  notice  and  correct  any  depar- 
ture from  what  they  consider  right,  namely,  the 
speech  of  their  fathers  and  mothers.  They  are  by 
nature  imitative  and  conservative  of  what  they  ad- 
mire. The  illiterate,  too,  believe  in  the  principle  of 
good  usage.  Even  the  natural  impulse  of  the  indi- 
vidual to  resent  correction  when  he  is  wrong  dis- 
plays the  same  conservative  tendency;  likewise  his 
subsequent  reaction,  after  he  has  looked  the  point 
up  in  the  dictionary.  The  normal  process  is  this. 
The  teacher  corrects  the  pupil,  or  the  pupil  corrects 


A  BATTLE  FOE  GOOD  USAGE        71 

the  teacher.  Some  heat  arises  in  the  discussion,  and 
the  battle  ends  without  an  admission  of  defeat  on 
either  side.  When  the  combatants  separate,  each 
furtively  repairs  to  an  authority  he  deems  better 
than  himself — to  some  one  who  knows  both  English 
and  Latin.  He  goes  to  the  work  of  Webster,  or 
Funk  and  Wagnalls,  or  Murray.  One  of  the  con- 
testants finds  himself  in  the  wronor.  Thereafter  he 
avoids  a  repetition  of  the  controversy  with  his  pre- 
vious foe,  being  careful,  however,  not  to  mispro- 
nounce the  same  word  again  in  the  same  presence. 
But  he  will  be  acrimonious  from  that  time  on  in  de- 
nouncing the  fault  in  any  one  else.  In  this  way  his 
self-love  recovers  from  the  hurt  it  has  suffered,  and 
the  stream  of  the  native  language  tends  to  rid  itself 
of  one  more  impurity. 


THE  TEACHING  OF  WRITTEN 
COMPOSITION ' 

LIKE  the  'cultural  value'  of  the  classics,  the  teach- 
ing of  English  composition  is  a  large  subject  for 
consideration  within  narrow  limits.  Properly  ampli- 
fied, the  subject  would  involve  some  treatment  of 
various  other  topics,  among  them  the  gradual  decline 
of  interest  in  the  disciplines  of  Greek  and  Latin,  which 
have  been  essential  to  the  development  of  English  style 
in  the  past ;  and  the  concomitant  popular  demand  for 
a  kind  of  education  in  the  vernacular  which  shall 
directly  liberate  the  utterance  of  the  masses,  rather 
than  produce  a  body  of  learned  men  whose  paramount 
influence  might  elevate  and  sustain  the  standards  of 
taste  and  good  usage. 

My  purpose,  however,  is  necessarily  restricted.  It  is 
my  hope  to  direct  the  attention  of  teachers  of  English, 
and  particularly  those  who  are  concerned  with  classes 
in  written  composition,  to  certain  underlying  prin- 
ciples that  should  govern  the  practice  of  requiring 
themes  or  essays  from  the  immature.  Fundamental 
principles  are  seldom  free  from  the  danger  of  neglect. 

*  Eeprinted,  with,  alterations,  from  Education  30.  421-430 
(March,  1910),  with  the  kind  consent  of  the  editor.  The  paper 
was  read  before  the  Modern  Language  Association  of  America 
at  Ithaca,  New  York,  December  28, 1909. 

72 


THE  DAILY  THEME  73 

"With  reference  to  composition  in  the  vernacular,  there 
seems  to  be  a  special  propriety  in  reverting  to  such 
principles,  since  within  recent  years  a  great  and  ex- 
emplary educational  power  in  the  East  has  had  to 
rediscover  one  of  them,  and  has  at  length  concluded 
that  the  children  of  America  should  not  be  forced  to 
make  bricks  without  straw.  In  the  academic  year  of 
1907-08  at  Harvard  University,  the  number  of  under- 
graduates enrolled  in  courses  primarily  devoted  to  the 
writing  of  English  was  considerably  larger  than  the 
number  in  courses  primarily  devoted  to  the  study  of 
English  literature,  the  proportion  being  almost  three 
to  two.  Since  then,  owing,  it  would  seem,  to  measures 
taken  at  Harvard  by  the  department  of  English,  this 
disproportion  has  undergone  a  change;  in  the  next 
academic  year  there  appears  to  have  been  a  leaning 
toward  courses  the  first  aim  of  which  was  the  acquisi- 
tion of  knowledge,  and  the  development  of  insight 
rather  than  expression.  There  would  be  no  advantage 
in  the  use  of  precise  statistics ;  the  preceding  case,  and 
the  following,  are  cited  only  in  order  to  define  a  gen- 
eral impression,  namely,  that  in  1909  or  thereabouts 
the  tide  began  to  drift  away  from  courses  in  the  *  daily 
theme '  and  its  like  at  the  place  from  which  many  other 
institutions  have  ultimately  borrowed  such  devices, 
though  this  drift  may  not  have  been  immediately  per- 
ceptible everywhere  else.  For  the  first  semester  of  the 
year  1909-10  at  a  representative  university  in  the 
Middle  West,  the  number  of  students  in  courses  mainly 
devoted  to  English  composition,  as  against  those  in 
courses  mainly  devoted  to  the  study  of  English  litera- 
ture, bore  a  proportion  of  about  ten  to  seven.    I  have 


74  THE  TEACHING  OF  COMPOSITION 

no  desire  to  draw  especial  notice  to  the  university  in 
question,  and  have  given  the  instance  as  presumably 
typical  of  a  good  many  institutions.^ 

To  one  who  from  the  beginning  could  have  watched 
the  daily  theme  advance  from  its  home  in  New  Eng- 
land to  a  gradual  conquest  of  the  South  and  West — 
while  Greek  kept  sailing  ever  farther  into  the  north  of 
Dame  Democracy's  opinion — the  spectacle  must  have 
been  attended  with  some  misgivings.  In  the  case  of 
many  teachers  who,  after  years  of  experiment,  persist 
— ^to  use  the  words  of  Milton — in  'forcing  the  empty 
wits  of  children  to  compose  themes,  verses,  and  ora- 
tions, which  are  the  acts  of  ripest  judgment,'  a  proc- 
ess which  he  compares  to  the  wringing  of  blood  from 
the  nose,  and  'the  plucking  of  untimely  fruit, '  ^  it  may 
be  that  the  only  words  to  apply  are  those  from  Burns : 

One  point  must  still  be  greatly  dark, 
The  moving  Why  they  do  it.^ 

1  Following  the  delivery  of  this  paper,  chaaiges  were  made  by 
certain  of  my  colleagues  in  the  preliminary  work  in  English  at 
Cornell  University;  since  then  virtually  no  courses  there  have 
been  given  in  which  the  practice  of  composition  has  not  been  in 
some  measure  connected  with  the  study  of  a  more  or  less  definite 
subject-matter.  Following  the  publication  of  the  article,  letters 
came  to  me  from  several  quarters  evincing  a  belief  that  I  had 
in  mind  this  or  that  institution  other  than  the  one  actually 
alluded  to. 

2  Tractate  Of  Education;  in  the  edition  by  Laura  E.  Lock- 
wood,  p.  6.  Throughout  the  paper  I  have  kept  in  mind  certain 
passages  from  Milton's  tractate,  Wordsworth's  sonnets  entitled 
Personal  TalTc,  and  Bacon's  Advancement  of  Learning. 

3  Address  to  the  Unco  Guid  7.  5-6. 


A  DISTEMPEE  OF  LEAENING  75 

To  do  a  thing,  and  to  continue  in  the  practice,  mainly 
because  one  hundred  or  one  thousand  others  are  en- 
gaged in  the  same  pursuit,  may  be  reasonable  in  a 
polity  like  that  of  Mr.  Kipling's  Bandar-log;  it  is  not 
the  sort  of  motive  that  should  dominate  the  republic 
of  American  colleges  and  universities.  Yet  one  may 
pertinently  inquire  whether  some  such  external  imi- 
tation of  one  institution  by  another  in  this  country 
has  not  been  the  chief  cause  in  forcing  the  jaded 
wits  of  partly-trained  instructors  in  English,  some- 
times known  as  'English  slaves,'  to  correct  number- 
less themes,  essays,  and  orations ;  an  occupation  which 
allows  these  young  men  to  do  little  else  during  what 
should  be  a  most  critical  period  of  their  growth,  that 
is,  during  the  period  when  the  Docent  in  a  Conti- 
nental university  pursues  the  liberal  investigations 
that  shall  shortly  make  him,  within  his  field,  a  master 
of  those  who  know.  In  a  land  like  ours,  which  prides 
itself  upon  the  development  of  efficiency,  no  harsher 
accusation  could  be  brought  against  the  '  daily  theme ' 
than  that  it  squanders  the  energy  of  the  teacher. 
It  causes  him  to  spend  an  immoderate  share  of  his 
time  upon  a  mass  of  writing  that  has  no  intrinsic 
value,  and  easily  leads  him  into  the  habit  of  regard- 
ing the  details  of  outer  form,  rather  than  the  sub- 
stance of  what  he  reads.  'Here,  therefore,'  as  Baeon 
says,  'is  the  first  distemper  of  learning,  when  men 
study  words  and  not  matter. '  ^  Is  it  not  true  that, 
if  you  take  care  of  the  teacher  of  English,  his  pupil 
will  be  taken  care  of?  Whatever  value  may  attach 
*  Advancement  of  Learning,  Book  I,  ed.  by  Cook,  p.  29. 


76  THE  TEACHING  OF  COMPOSITION 

to  this  notion,  daily  themes  and  their  like,  once 
established  in  the  curriculum,  constitute  a  barrier 
to  its  acceptance.    But  let  us  turn  to  the  pupil. 

What,  then,  are  the  laws  that  should  govern  the 
kind  and  amount  of  writing  which  we  may  require 
from  our  undergraduates?  In  asking  this  question, 
we  are  to  have  in  mind  the  needs  of  university  or 
college  students  of  the  first  and  second  years,  but 
the  answer  is  applicable  to  a  much  larger  circle  of 
learners. 

By  way  of  preliminary,  one  might  inquire  whether 
it  is  necessary  that  the  art  of  written  composition 
should  be  taught  at  all.  The  common  belief  that  it 
is  necessary  may  be  too  readily  accepted.  The  wisest 
of  all  teachers,  though  He  constantly  referred  to 
written  tradition  as  a  standard,  and  expected  His 
hearers  to  be  familiar  with  it,  is  not  reported  to  have 
written  more  than  once — and  then  in  the  sand.  The 
wisest  of  the  Greeks  in  the  time  of  Pericles  is  repre- 
sented by  Plato  at  the  end  of  the  Phoedriis  as  argu- 
ing to  the  uttermost  against  the  art  of  written  com- 
position, except  as  a  means  to  the  preservation  of 
records,  or  as  a  pastime  for  the  old.  Aside  from 
his  main  contention,  this  argument  of  the  Platonic 
Socrates  in  favor  of  the  spoken  word  offers  no  little 
comfort  to  the  increasing  number  of  those  who  main- 
tain that  our  present  courses  in  English  composi- 
tion should  turn  more  and  more  upon  the  exercise 
of  distinct  utterance,  that  clear  and  well-formed 
speech  is  more  intimately  connected  than  writing 
itself  with   that  precision   of   thought   and   feeling 


SEEK  INSIGHT  FIRST  77 

which  is  the  basis  of  all  good  style.  Yet  it  may  be 
urged  that  Plato,  the  consummate  artist  in  Greek 
prose,  is  himself  an  example  with  which  to  combat 
the  argument  against  writing  that  he  chooses  to  put 
into  the  mouth  of  a  dramatic  character.  Even  so, 
shall  we,  then,  immediately  rush  away  to  the  con- 
clusion that  it  is  desirable,  both  for  the  individual 
and  for  the  State,  that  all  persons,  or  all  the  per- 
sons in  any  group,  should  obtain  an  equal  opportu- 
nity for  self-expression,  whether  in  writing  or  other- 
wise? 

So  far  as  concerns  the  individual,  it  is  clear  that 
the  teacher,  whether  of  English  or  any  other  subject, 
should  prefer  to  make  his  pupil  well-informed  and 
happy,  rather  than  enable  him  to  advertise  his  wis- 
dom and  contentment.  Even  in  a  democracy  it  may 
now  and  then  be  true  that  silence  is  golden,  and 
'long,  barren  silence'  better  than  'personal  talk.' 
As  for  the  State,  it  is  obvious  that  the  commonwealth 
is  benefited  when  the  few  who  have  a  comprehension 
of  its  needs  receive  a  hearing,  and  the  many  possess 
their  souls  in  quiet.  Nevertheless,  among  the  plati- 
tudes that  have  escaped  challenge  is  the  current  no- 
tion that  every  one  should  be  taught  to  express  him- 
self when  on  his  feet,  since  there  is  no  telling  how 
often,  in  the  way  of  civic  duty,  the  average  man 
may  need  to  address  an  audience.  One  may  venture 
to  think  that  an  inordinate  amount  of  precious  time 
has  been  lavished  in  windy  debate  upon  generalities 
by  students  who  have  never  made  a  speech,  or  needed 
to  make  one,  after  turning  their  backs  upon  the  aca- 


78  THE  TEACHING  OF  COMPOSITION 

demic  rostrum;  and  the  fact  remains  that  the  aver- 
age man,  either  in  civic  or  in  private  relations, 
always  needs  to  know  his  business  before  he  talks 
about  it.  A  similar  observation  holds  good  with 
reference  to  the  inordinate  practice  of  written  com- 
position for  its  own  sake.  It  sounds  like  a  truism 
to  say  that  to  acquire,  and  to  meditate  upon  what  is 
acquired,  are  more  necessary  than  to  express  the  re- 
sult in  writing.  Yet  this  essential  priority  of  insight 
over  expression  is  not  reflected  in  the  large  number 
of  undergraduates  throughout  our  country  who  have 
engaged  in  the  writing  of  themes  with  little  or  no 
restriction  of  subjects,  as  compared  with  the  nimi- 
ber  engaged  in  the  systematic  study  of  English 
literature  under  teachers  who  have  made  this  field, 
or  some  part  of  it,  their  own. 

It  may  be  objected  that  the  disproportion  exists 
only  on  the  surface,  and  that  the  student's  whole 
experience,  including  his  activity  at  the  time  in 
other  branches  of  the  curriculum,  should  furnish 
him  with  material  about  which  he  can  tell  the  truth 
in  writing.  But  the  experience  of  the  Freshman  or 
Sophomore  is  easily  exhausted;  he  reads,  and  has 
read  as  a  schoolboy,  very  few  solid  books  for  him- 
self; and,  in  the  other  subjects  which  he  may  be 
studying,  his  teachers  are  better  fitted  to  gauge  the 
propriety  of  his  statements  than  is  the  teacher  of 
English.  In  any  case,  we  can  hardly  avoid  the  ad- 
mission that  everywhere,  and  at  all  times,  the  truth 
is  of  more  importance  than  any  language  by  which 
it  may  happen  to  be  represented. 


THE  END  AND  THE  MEANS  79 

May  we  not  put  the  argument  into  a  form  like 
this?  The  main  function  of  the  vernacular,  Tal- 
leyrand to  the  contrary  notwithstanding,  is  the  com- 
munication of  truth.  In  a  given  case  the  importance 
of  the  function  is  measured  by  the  importance  of 
the  truth  to  be  conveyed.  Since  we  may  seldom  take 
it  for  granted  that  the  unripe  student  is  in  posses- 
sion of  a  valuable  truth,  and  since  the  first  inquiry 
of  the  teacher  should,  therefore,  be  concerned  with 
the  truth  and  accuracy  of  the  pupil's  communica- 
tion, it  follows  that  the  teaching  of  self-expression 
can  never  safely  be  made  the  immediate  aim  of  any 
course.  If  a  sense  of  values  is,  in  the  nature  of 
things,  primary,  it  will  remain  so  in  spite  of  a 
thousand  courses  that  may  be  built  upon  some  other 
hypothesis.  If  expression  is  a  medium  for  impart- 
ing one's  sense  of  values,  if  it  is  essentially  a  means 
to  an  end,  we  fall  into  the  gravest  possible  error 
when  we  treat  it  as  an  end  in  itself. 

Our  main  question,  therefore,  resolves  itself  pre- 
cisely into  this  one  of  means  and  end ;  and  hence  we 
must  lay  the  emphasis  where  it  belongs,  and  no 
longer  ask,  '  Can  we  teach  such  and  such  persons  the 
art  of  composition?'  Instead,  we  are  bound  to  ask, 
'Can  we  use  the  practice  of  written  composition  as 
a  means  of  imparting  insight?'  Obviously  we  can 
use  it  as  a  test  for  determining  whether  the  pupil 
has  gained  an  appreciation  of  any  particular  sub- 
ject, and  by  successive  tests  can  determine  whether 
he  continues  to  advance  in  his  appreciation.  We 
may  perhaps  use  it  with  some  frequency  in  order 


80  THE  TEACHING  OF  COMPOSITION 

to  note  the  increasing  faithfulness  of  his  observation 
within  a  definite  province;  more  rarely  in  order  to 
measure  his  ability  to  compare  his  observations  and 
to  draw  inferences  from  them.  Employed  by  a 
teacher  who  has  such  ends  in  view,  the  writing  of 
English  becomes  an  instrument  of  value  for  pro- 
moting a  general  education,  which  may  be  taken  to 
mean  a  situdy  of  particular  subjects  in'  the  order 
of  their  importance  and  in  a  rational  sequence.  Em- 
ployed for  less  serious,  or  mistaken,  ends,  written 
composition  may  be  regarded  as  a  pastime  for  the 
young,  or  as  an  injurious  waste  of  time. 

From  these  considerations  we  may  pass  to  a  few 
others,  some  of  them  implicit  in  the  foregoing. 

The  insight  which  it  is  the  function  of  the  teacher 
of  English  to  impart  is  an  insight,  not  into  current 
theories  of  geology,  or  economics,  or  agriculture,  or, 
in  short,  into  much  of  the  heterogeneous  material 
that,  in  the  shape  of  select  readings,  often  serves  as 
a  basis  for  studying  the  formal  structure  of  exposi- 
tion and  description;  it  is  an  insight  into  the  best 
traditions  of  English  literature  and  such  other  litera- 
tures as  are  directly  involved  in  an  understanding 
of  the  English.  This,  presumably,  is  the  material 
into  which  the  vision  of  the  teacher  himself  has  most 
deeply  penetrated.  If  not,  he  ought  to  be  teaching 
something  else,  or  nothing.  Let  the  teacher  of 
writers,  as  well  as  the  writer,  observe  the  caution 
of  Horace,  and  choose  with  care  his  proper  field. 
Some  portion  or  phase  of  this  subject  which  he  knows 
and  loves  is  the  matter  about  which  he  may  ask  his 


THE  PANGS  OF  AUTHORSHIP  81 

pupils  to  write;  and  not  in  helter-skelter  fashion, 
as  if  it  made  no  difference  where  one  began,  what 
one  studied  next,  and  so  on,  save  as  a  question  of 
arbitrary  order;  but  progressively,  on  the  supposi- 
tion that  in  the  advance  towaxd  knowledge  and 
understanding,  certain  things,  not  schematic,  but 
substantial,  necessarily  precede  others. 

Further,  the  amount  of  writing  demanded  of  the 
immature  student  should  be  relatively  small.  In 
the  space  of  a  term,  how  many  teachers  of  English 
composition  produce  as  much  manuscript  of  an  aca- 
demic character  as  they  expect  from  individuals  of 
the  Freshman  or  Sophomore  class  ?  If  our  courses  in 
daily  themes  are  to  any  extent  derived  from  the  edu- 
cational theories  of  antiquity,  we  may  imagine  that 
by  one  channel  or  another  they  eventually  go  back 
to  Quintilian.  But  what  is  their  real  connection 
with  the  familiar  advice  of  Quintilian,  so  vigorously 
rendered  by  Ben  Jonson,  *No  matter  how  slow  the 
style  be  at  first,  so  it  be  labored  and  accurate';  or 
with  this,  'So  that  the  sum  of  all  is,  ready  writing 
makes  not  good  writing,  but  good  writing  brings  on 
ready  writing'?  Or  what  relation  have  they  to  the 
Horatian  counsel,  not  merely  to  fill  the  mind  from 
the  page  Socratic  before  one  begins  writing,  but, 
after  one  has  written,  to  correct,  even  to  a  tenth  re- 
view? And  the  page  Socratic  itself  in  one  case  is 
reported  to  have  been  seven  times  rewritten.  Ac- 
cordingly, from  Plato,  who  remodeled  the  opening  of 
the  RepuUic  these  seven  times,  to  Bacon,  who  revised 
the  Instauratio  Magna  at  least  twelve  times,  and  Man- 


82  THE  TEACHING  OF  COMPOSITION 

zoni,  who  would  often  recast  a  sentence  a  score  of 
times,  and  then  perhaps  not  print  a  word  of  it,  and 
John  Richard  Green,  who  rewrote  the  first  chapter  of 
The  Making  of  England  ten  times,  there  is  a  host  of 
witnesses^  crying  out  against  the  facile  penmanship 
of  five  'themes'  a  week  on  five  different  subjects — ap- 
proximately one  hundred  and  seventy-five  papers  in 
an  academic  year,  from  the  empty  wits  of  Sopho- 
mores! To  this  number  must  be  added  six  or  eight 
'long  themes.'  Could  any  course  of  reading  be  de- 
signed which  at  the  end  of  the  year  preceding  should 
make  of  the  Freshman  a  full  man  to  the  extent  that 
such  an  exercise  as  this  in  the  Sophomore  year  de- 
mands ? 

In  fact,  the  more  one  compares  the  current  prac- 
tice of  theme-writing  with  traditional  theory  and 
the  actual  experience  of  good  writers  in  the  past, 

*  On  rewriting  and  other  forms  of  painstaking  in  composition, 
see  Horace,  Ars  Poetica  289-294;  Ben  Jonson,  Discoveries,  ed. 
by  Castelain,  pp.  35-6,  84-6;  Boswell's  Life  of  Johnson,  Oxford 
edition,  2.  562;  Eousseau,  Confessions,  Book  3  (in  the  transla- 
tion published  by  Glaisher,  pp.  86-7);  Gillman's  Life  of  Cole- 
ridge, p.  63;  Christabel,  ed.  by  E.  H.  Coleridge,  p.  40;  Journals 
of  Dorothy  Wordsworth,  ed.  by  "Knight,  1.  82ff.;  Letters  of  the 
Wordsworth  Family,  ed.  by  Knight,  2.  312,  313,  470;  Letters  of 
J.  E.  Newman,  ed.  by  Mozley,  2.  476-7;  Lucas,  Life  of  Charles 
Lamh  1.  335-6;  Nation,  New  York,  Nov.  9,  1905  (on  Manzoni) ; 
Bevue  Politique  et  Litteraire,  Feb.  22,  1890,  p.  239;  Faguet, 
Flaubert,  pp.  145  ff . ;  William  Allingham,  A  Diary,  p.  334.  Pas- 
sages from  these  and  other  sources  are  given  in  full  in  Section 
IV  (Illustrations  of  the  Practice  of  Great  Writers  in  Compos- 
ing) of  my  Methods  and  Aims  in  the  Study  of  Literature,  1915, 
pp.  63-95. 


EXPRESSION  A  PART  OF  CHARACTER     83 

the  less  this  practice  seems  to  harmonize  with  either. 
Nor  does  it  meet  with  the  approval  of  representa- 
tive literary  men  in  the  present.  Speaking  at  Ox- 
ford University  not  many  years  ago,  Mr.  Frederic 
Harrison  delivered  himself  as  follows: 

'I  look  with  sorrow  on  the  habit  which  has  grown 
up  in  the  university  since  my  day  (in  the  far-off 
fifties) — the  habit  of  making  a  considerable  part  of 
the  education  of  the  place  to  turn  on  the  art  of  serv- 
ing up  gobbets  of  prepared  information  in  essays 
more  or  less  smooth  and  correct — more  or  less  suc- 
cessful imitations  of  the  viands  that  are  cooked  for 
us  daily  in  the  press.  I  have  heard  that  a  student 
has  been  asked  to  write  as  many  as  seven  essays  in 
a  week,  a  task  which  would  exhaust  the  fertility  of 
a  Swift.  The  bare  art  of  writing  readable  para- 
graphs in  passable  English  is  easy  enough  to  master; 
one  that  steady  pra,ctice  and  good  coaching  can  teach 
the  average  man.  But  it  is  a  poor  art,  which  readily 
lends  itself  to  harm.  It  leads  the  shallow  ones  to 
suppose  themselves  to  be  deep,  the  raw  ones  to  fancy 
they  are  cultured,  and  it  burdens  the  world  with  a 
deluge  of  facile  commonplace.  It  is  the  business  of 
a  university  to  train  the  mind  to  think,  and  to  im- 
part solid  knowledge,  not  to  turn  out  nimble  penmen 
who  may  earn  a  living  as  the  clerks  and  salesmen  of 
literature. '  ^ 

And  to  much  the  same  effect  Lord  Morley: 

*I  will  even  venture,  with  all  respect  to  those  who 
are  teachers  of  literature,  to  doubt  the  excellence 
and  utility  of  the  practice  of  over-much  essay-writ- 
ing and  composition.     I  have  very  little  faith  in 

*  On  English  Prose,  in  Tennyson,  MusTcin,  Mill,  and  other  Lit- 
erary Estimates,  pp.  153-4;  see  Cooper,  Theories  of  Style,  p. 
440. 


g4  THE  TEACHING  OF  COMPOSITION 

rules  of  style,  though  I  have  an  unbounded  faith 
in  the  virtue  of  cultivating  direct  and  precise  ex- 
pression. But  you  must  carry  on  the  operation  in- 
side the  mind,  and  not  merely  by  practising  literary 
deportment  on  paper.  It  is  not  everybody  who  can 
command  the  mighty  rhythm  of  the  greatest  masters 
of  human  speech.  But  every  one  can  make  reason- 
ably sure  that  he  knows  what  he  means,  and  whether 
he  has  found  the  right  word.  These  are  internal 
operations,  and  are  not  forwarded  by  writing  for 
writing's  sake.  Everybody  must  be  urgent  for  at- 
tention to  expression,  if  that  attention  be  exercised  in 
the  right  way.  It  has  been  said  a  million  times  that 
the  foundation  of  right  expression  in  speech  or  writ- 
ing is  sincerity.  That  is  as  true  now  as  it  has  ever 
been.  Right  expression  is  a  part  of  character.  As 
somebody  has  said,  by  learning  to  speak  with  preci- 
sion, you  learn  to  think  with  correctness;  and  the 
way  to  firm  and  vigorous  speech  lies  through  the 
cultivation  of  high  and  noble  sentiments.  So  far  as 
my  observation  has  gone,  men  will  do  better  if  they 
seek  precision  by  studying  carefully  and  with  an 
open  mind  and  a  vigilant  eye  the  great  models  of 
writing,  than  by  excessive  practice  of  writing  on 
their  own  account.'^ 

Could  one  wish  for  a  better  defense  than  Lord 
Morley  here  supplies  of  the  notion  that  the  cultiva- 
tion of  the  vernacular  must  go  hand  in  hand  with 
a  systematic  study  of  literature,  and  of  models  never 
short  of  the  best? 

Now  it  would  be  idle  to  suggest  that  the  war 
which  has  been  waged  against  the  illiteracy  of  our 
Freshmen  and  Sophomores,  and  which  has  centred 
in  the  'daily  theme,'  has  been  totally  without  avail; 

*  Studies  in  Literature,  pp.  222-3. 


MILTON  ON  TRUE  ELOQUENCE  85 

though  every  teacher  must  recall  instances  where  a 
compulsory  exercise  in  fluent  writing  has  chiefly 
served  to  encourage  shallowpates  in  shallow  think- 
ing and  heedless  expression.  But  where  the  struggle 
has  availed,  this  has  resulted  from  the  more  or  less 
random  observance  of  the  principle  which  has  been 
enunciated,  namely,  the  priority  of  insight.  Still, 
the  observance  has  been  random ;  for  even  where  the 
teacher  of  composition  at  the  outset  announces  his 
belief  that  the  disease  which  shows  itself  in  bad 
writing  is  bad  thinking,  he  nevertheless  is  prone  to 
spend  the  term,  or  the  year,  in  battling  against  the 
symptoms.  He  lacks  the  courage  of  his  convictions, 
and  needs  to  restore  his  spirit  with  the  passage  in 
which  Milton  says: 

'For  me,  readers,  although  I  cannot  say  that  I  am 
utterly  untrained  in  those  rules  which  best  rhetori- 
cians have  given,  or  unacquainted  with  those  ex- 
amples which  the  prime  authors  of  eloquence  have 
written  in  any  learned  tongue;  yet  true  eloquence 
I  find  to  be  none  but  the  serious  and  hearty  love  of 
truth ;  and  that  whose  mind  soever  is  fully  possessed 
with  a  fervent  desire  to  know  good  things,  and  with 
the  dearest  charity  to  infuse  the  knowledge  of  them 
into  others,  when  such  a  man  would  speak,  his  words 
(by  what  I  can  express),  like  so  many  nimble  and 
airy  servitors,  trip  about  him  at  command,  and  in 
well-'ordered  files,  as  he  would'  wish,  fall  aptly  into 
their  own  places. '  ^ 

The  whole  question  does,  indeed,  finally  reduce 
itself  to  one  of  pedagogical  faith,  to  a  belief  that 

^  An  Apology  for  Smectymnuus,  in  Milton's  Prose  WorJcs,  ed. 
by  St.  John,  3.  165. 
7 


86  THE  TEACHING  OF  COMPOSITION 

the  ideal  will  work — that  it  is  the  only  thing  that 
will  work  effectively.  If  we  never  ask  the  student 
to  write  for  us  save  on  the  basis  of  something  which 
we  ourselves  may  properly  be  supposed  to  know;  if 
the  material  is  one  concerning  which  his  knowledge 
is  made  to  grow  throughout  a  considerable  length  of 
time;  if  we  expect  of  every  essay,  paragraph,  sen- 
tence, phrase,  and  word  which  he  writes'  that  it  sihall 
tell  the  exact,  if  not  the  whole,  truth ;  if  the  subject- 
matter  of  his  study  be  itself  the  truest  and  most  in- 
spiring that  we  can  employ  to  fire  his  imagination 
and  clarify  his  vision;  if  we  observe  all  these  condi- 
tions, will  he  altogether  fail  in  acquiring  the  out- 
ward badge  of  education  which  is  popularly  de- 
manded of  the  college  graduate?  Will  he  fail  to 
express  himself  better  as  his  personality  becomes 
better  worth  expressing?  If,  for  example,  we  took 
our  cue  from  the  Greeks,^  and  restricted  our  train- 
ing in  the  vernacular  to  the  patient  absorption  of 
one  or  two  supreme  masterpieces,  would  not  our 
students  escape  what  Ruskin  says  such  a  practice 
enabled  him  to  escape,  'even  in  the  foolishest  times 
of  youth,'  the  writing  of  'entirely  superficial  or 
formal  English '  ?  ^  Rather,  would  they  not  thus 
appropriate  a  matter  wherein,  on  occasion,  they 
might    with    justice    become    right    voluble?      No 

*  Compare  Xenophon,  Symposium  3.  5  (in  the  translation  by 
Dakyns,  Vol.  3,  Part  1,  p.  307),  where  one  of  the  guests  says: 
*  My  father,  in  his  pains  to  make  me  a  good  man,  compelled  me 
to  learn  the  whale  of  Homer 's  poems,  and  so  it  happens  that 
even  now  I  can  repeat  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey  by  heart. ' 

2  Euskin,  Proeterita,  chap.  1 ;  cf .  also  chap.  2. 


THE  IDEAL  IS  PRACTICAL  87 

teacher  can  deny  it  unless  he  is  ready  to  pretend  that 
insight  and  expression  are  separable,  or  that  insight 
is  subordinate.  Yet  the  belief  that  they  are  insepa- 
rable is  not  merely  the  verdict  of  present-day  com- 
mon sense ;  it  has  received  frequent  vindication  in  the 
history  of  culture,  as,  for  example,  from  the  very 
practical  man  to  whom,  more  than  to  any  other 
single  person  in  the  annals  of  Europe,  the  continued 
existence  of  modern  culture  is  owing,  that  is,  to 
Charlemagne.  In  a  plea  for  the  study  of  letters, 
lest  the  knowledge  of  the  art  of  writing  vanish  away, 
and  with  it  all  ability  to  interpret  the  Scriptures,  he 
says  to  the  abbots  and  bishops  in  the  year  787: 
'While  errors  of  speech  are  harmful,  we  all  know 
that  errors  of  thought  are  more  harmful  still.  There- 
fore we  exhort  you,  not  merely  not  to  neglect  the 
study  of  letters,  but  to  pursue  it  with  diligence.'  ^ 

1  Comparetti,  Virgil  in  the  Middle  Ages,  pp.  96-7. 


VI 

THE  CORRECTION  OF  PAPERS ' 

WHAT  does  'the  correction  of  papers'  actually 
mean?  Briefly,  it  means  the  correction,  or 
straightening,  or  normalization,  of  one  personality  by 
another,  through  the  instrumentality  of  truth  ex- 
pressed in  language.  At  least  two  personalities  are 
concerned;  and  between  A,  the  teacher,  and  B,  the 
taught,  lies  the  medium  of  the  vernacular  or  some  other 
tongue,  representing  a  third  element  that  needs  consid- 
eration. A  and  B  have  each  their  rights  as  well  as 
their  duties,  which  require  careful  adjustment.  They 
have  also  their  relations  to  some  larger  group,  of 
which  they  are  individual  members;  since  their  stud- 
ies affect  the  welfare  of  the  national  language,  there 
are  mutual  obligations  existing  between  them  and 
C,  the  State;  for  it  will  hardly  be  denied  that  edu- 
cation is  the  chief  affair  of  state,  since  it  determines 
the  future  of  the  nation,  or  that  an  ability  to  think 

*  From  an  address  delivered  at  the  College  Conference  on  Eng- 
lish in  the  Central  Atlantic  States,  Albany,  New  York,  Novem- 
ber 29,  1913,  and  first  published  in  The  English  Journal  3.  290- 
298  (May,  1914).  With  it  is  incorporated  (pp.  99-101)  the  sub- 
stance of  my  brief  paper  entitled  A  Note  on  Paraphrasing,  -vrhich 
appeared  in  The  English  Journal  3.  381-2  (June,  1914).  The 
two  papers  reappear  in  their  present  form  with  the  kind  consent 
of  the  editor  of  The  English  Journal. 

88 


RIGHTS  AND  DUTIES  89 

justly,  and  to  tell  the  truth,  is  the  principal  end  of 
education. 

In  taking  up  the  rights  and  duties  of  both  teacher 
and  pupil  with  reference  to  the  national  language,  I 
shall  advocate  no  hard  and  fast  procedure  for  any 
course  or  class.  We  have  had  perhaps  too  much  pre- 
scription of  rules  in  the  teaching  of  English,  and  too 
little  discussion  of  first  principles  which  the  teacher 
may  assimilate,  and,  when  they  have  become  a  regu- 
lative force  in  his  life,  may  instinctively  apply  in  the 
varying  circumstances  of  his  profession.  My  aim  is 
simply  to  encourage  others  in  thinking  about  the 
fundamental  obligations  already  mentioned,  and  to 
suggest  an  ideal  balance  among  them — something  not 
in  all  respects'  within  easy  grasp,  it  may  be,  and  yet, 
on  the  whole,  not  so  far  beyond  our  reach  that  we  can- 
not profitably  strive  to  attain  it.  In  order  to  suggest 
this  ideal,  it  may  be  necessary  to  lay  stress  on  certain 
elements  in  the  problem  of  teaching  English  which  are 
often  overlooked — the  rights  of  the  State,  for  instance, 
in  respect  to  the  purity  of  the  national  language ;  and 
it  may  be  useless  to  dwell  at  length  upon  those  elements 
which  commonly  receive  undue  attention — as,  for  ex- 
ample, the  claims  of  the  mediocre  to  an  education  that 
is  quite  superficial. 

Let  us  begin  with  the  medium  of  utterance.  First 
of  all,  it  behoves  us  to  remember  that  language,  in  its 
essence,  is  something  spoken,  and  that  speech  lies  closer 
to  the  personality  we  wish  to  correct  than  does  writing. 
And  hence  the  need  of  having  the  student  read  many 
of  his  exercises  aloud  in  class,  so  that  he  may  acquire 


90  THE  CORRECTION  OF  PAPERS 

the  habit  of  uttering  premeditated  truth,  may  receive 
correction  by  word  of  mouth,  and  may  reform  a  num- 
ber of  his  thoughts  and  phrases  with  the  help  of  ear 
and  tongue,  as  well  as  with  the  eye. 

Now  we  eannot  disjoin  language  from  the  substance 
of  which  it  is  the  expression.  This  substance,  again, 
proceeds  from  the  mind  of  the  writer  or  speaker,  but, 
before  that,  it  has  entered  into  his  mind  from  sources 
without.  In  a  sense,  then,  the  correction  of  a  theme  or 
essay  should  begin  with  the  sources  of  information — as 
it  must  end  with  the  details  of  usage;  for  the  first 
demand  we  make  of  language,  whether  spoken  or  writ- 
ten, is  that  it  represent  some  portion  of  truth  that 
deserves  communication.  May  we  assume  that  the 
student  in  his  last  year  at  school,  or  in  his  first  year  at 
college,  will  be  ready  with  something  worthy  of  utter- 
ance, if  he  is  left  to  his  own  devices,  or  to  chance,  in 
his  selection  of  subjects?  "We  cannot  assume  it.  We 
must  make  sure  in  advance  that  his  mind  has  been 
filled,  and  we  must  know  with  what  it  has  been  filled ; 
we  must  see  to  it  that  he  has  materials  of  thought,  and 
that  the  materials  are  well  in  excess  of  all  drafts  we 
are  likely  to  make  upon  them  when  we  ask  for  written 
compositions.  Emptiness  of  mind  is  a  serious  flaw  in 
the  writer  of  a  theme,  and  demands  correction.  We 
must  see  to  all  this  because  the  first  and  sharpest  of 
censures  must  be  uttered  when  the  student  (or  any  one 
else)  undertakes  to  write  upon  a  subject  of  which  he 
knows  nothing.  In  the  study  of  the  vernacular,  so 
close  is  this  to  the  soul  of  the  learner,  it  is  perilous  to 
dally  with  the  truth.    We  dare  not  let  our  pupils  infer 


PROGEESS  IN  THINKING  91 

from  our  treatment  of  their  compositions  that  the 
truth  can  ever  be  a  secondary  matter,  or  that  substance 
is  of  less  account  than  the  way  one  manipulates  it. 

The  truth  of  the  individual  thoughts  is  the  first 
consideration.  Next  in  importance  comes  their 
order.  Here  is  a  topic  which  our  present  generation 
is  not  likely  to  forget,  much  attention  being  paid  to 
'sequence'  in  our  manuals  of  composition.  Yet  there 
is  something  more  to  be  said  about  it.  Not  only  must 
we  expect  a  reasonable  sequence  in  the  matter  which  a 
student  on  a  given  day  exhibits  in  his  theme ;  but  there 
is  an  order,  by  no  means  superficial  or  negligible, 
which  the  unwitting  pupil  cannot  be  expected  to  fur- 
nish in  his  work,  but  which  nevertheless  must  be  forth- 
coming, namely,  a  substantial  order  in  the  tasks  that 
are  assigned  from  week  to  week  and  from  month  to 
month  in  a  course  of  systematic  study.  An  essential 
progress  in  the  thinking  of  the  pupil  must  be  assured. 
How  can  this  be  brought  about  ?  The  following  is  one 
suggestion.  Let  the  teacher  of  English  restrict  the 
subject-matter  of  his  courses  to  the  field  he  is  sup- 
posed to  know.  Within  this  field  let  him  select  a  body 
of  material  that  is  interesting  to  him,  as  well  as  im- 
portant in  itself,  and  at  the  same  time  is  not  beyond 
the  capacity  of  his  class.  In  preparing  to  teach  with 
this  chosen  material,  let  him  meditate  long  upon  the 
point  where  he  must  begin  if  he  is  to  attain  his  object, 
and  yet  longer  upon  this  object,  that  is,  upon  the  pre- 
cise end  he  desires  to  reach  with  his  group  of  learne:-*^ 
by  the  close  of  the  year.  Let  the  writing  of  his  stu- 
dents deal  with  successive  parts  of  that  material,  and 


92  THE  CORRECTION  OF  PAPERS 

let  the  correction  of  papers,  like  any  other  educational 
device,  be  at  all  times  subservient  to  the  end  he  has  in 
view,  namely,  to  convert  unfed,  unorganized,  unsensi- 
tive  minds  into  minds  that  are  well-nourished,  orderly, 
and  sensitive.  Otherwise  he  may  continue  an  unceas- 
ing strife  with  the  external  signs  of  illiteracy,  and 
never  touch  the  inner  seat  of  weakness  and  disease. 

But  we  are  verging  on  the  duties  of  the  teacher. 
What,  in  general,  may  we  require  of  the  personality 
that  is  engaged  in  correcting  others  through  the 
medium  of  the  vernacular?  First,  the  teacher  must 
have  the  right  sort  of  personality ;  this  affords  the  sole 
guaranty  that  he  will  have  sought  out  and  received  the 
right  sort  of  training  before  he  enters  upon  his  profes- 
sion. It  is  almost  indispensable  that  he  come  from  a 
family  and  home  where  good  books  are  read  and  a  good 
custom  is  observed  in  speaking.  It  is  absolutely  indis- 
pensable that  from  early  youth  he  shall  have  been  a 
reader  of  the  best  things.  He  must  be  so  familiar  with 
the  masterpieces  of  literature  that  he  has  a  standard  of 
good  sense  and  good  English  within  him.  He  must  be 
a  well  of  English  undefiled.  Late-learners  may  have 
their  use  in  the  teaching  of  other  subjects ;  they  wiU 
not  do  for  English.  Mere  conscious  rules,  acquired 
after  one  has  reached  maturity,  will  never  take  the 
place  of  a  correct  habit  formed  during  childhood  and 
adolescence ;  they  cannot  rectify  a  vicious  tendency  in 
one's  mode  of  utterance,  they  cannot  change  one's 
mental  disposition. 


PEEPARATION  OF  THE  TEACHER       93 

Yet  the  only  proper  complement  of  natural  aptitude 
and  correct  habit  is  adequate  professional  training.  As 
Horace  says : 

To  me  nor  art  without  rich  gifts  of  mind, 
Nor  yet  mere  genius  rude  and  unrefined, 
Seems  equal  to  the  task.     They  each  require 
The  aid  of  each,  and  must  as  friends  conspire.^ 

Our  guardians  of  usage  must  have  some  such  education 
as  the  poets  and  orators  who  have  enriched,  refined, 
and  established  the  English  tongue.  Upon  this  great 
topic  I  have  touched  elsewhere.^  Suffice  it  to  say  that 
a  candidate  for  the  teaching  of  English  in  the  prepar- 
atory school  should  have  a  thorough  grounding  in 
Latin  (if  possible  also  in  Greek),  a  substantial  knowl- 
edge of  all  the  ancient  literary  masterpieces — of  the 
Latin  ones  mainly  at  first  hand,  and  of  the  Greek  at 
least  through  translations.  In  addition  to  the  degree 
of  Bachelor  of  Arts,  he  should  have  a  year  of  special 
work  in  the  theory  of  poetry,  reaching  back  from  the 
treatises  of  Shelley  and  Sidney  to  the  Poetics  of  Aris- 
totle, and  accompanying  the  study  of  principles  by 
judicious  reading  in  the  chief  English  poete;  in  Old 
and  Middle  English,  so  that  he  may  see  the  earlier  as 
well  as  the  later  literature  in  due  perspective,  and  may 
be  able  to  consult  a  historical  dictionary  of  the  lan- 
guage with  intelligence;  and  in  the  development  of 
prose,  beginning  at  least  with  Cicero  and  Quintilian, 
and  eoming  down  to  the  English  Bible  and  to  Burke 

*  Ars  Poetica  409-11,  in  the  translation  by  Howes. 
2  See  pp.  31-4. 


94  THE  COKRECTION  OF  PAPERS 

and  Newman.  Quintilian,  at  all  events,  should  not  be 
omitted,  as  the  very  best  advice  on  the  practice  of  com- 
position and  the  correction  of  errors  is  to  be  found  in 
him.  The  prospective  teacher  of  English  in  the  college 
or  university  should  have  something  more.  He  should 
have  the  literary  insight  and  human  sympathy  that 
come  from  a  full  three  years  of  special  preparation 
under  expert  guidance;  he  should  have  the  doctoral 
degree,  and  the  degree  should  mean  what  it  is  supposed 
to  mean. 

In  any  case,  the  corrector  of  personalities  has  a 
right,  nay,  a  duty — his  natural  right,  and  his  essen- 
tial duty — to  live,  and  to  live  abundantly.  Nothing 
could  be  worse  than  a  teacher  of  English  who  is  half- 
dead  or  half-alive,  from  whatever  cause.  A  half- 
trained  instructor  may  be  deemed  to  be  only  half-alive. 
But  suppose  he  has  the  natural  endowment  and  the 
acquired  training  that  the  teacher  needs ;  one  requisite 
to  the  continuance  of  his  life  is  leisure  for  study.  Not 
only  that,  but  he  must  have  the  strength  and  the  in- 
spiration as  well,  and  also  the  outward  incentive.  In 
reinforcing  what  has  just  been  said,  let  us  mention  a 
few  things  a  university  instructor  ought  not  to  be  or 
to  do.  He  ought  not  to  be  untrained  in  any  branch 
that  is  requisite  to  an  understanding  of  the  English 
language  and  literature.  He  ought  not  to  be  the  sort 
of  person  who  affects  to  despise  scholarship.  (Shake- 
speare respected  it,  Chaucer  and  Milton  possessed  it, 
Greorge  Eliot  obviously  developed  her  literary  powers 
through  it.)  He  ought  not  to  be  lacking  in  ambition, 
or  on  any  score  unworthy  or  hopeless  of  advancement 


RIGHTS  AND  DUTIES  OF  THE  PUPIL  95 

in  his  profession.  Furthermore,  he  ought  not  to  be 
overburdened,  stultified,  or  disheartened  with  the  read' 
ing  of  huge  piles  of  uninspiring  manuscript.  There 
must  not  be  an  overplus  of  uninteresting  sentences 
and  paragraphs  in  the  sum-total  of  what  he  reads,  but 
thei  reverse:  he  must  have  more  hours  for  Chaucer, 
Spenser,  Shakespeare,  and  Milton  than  for  Freshman 
themes;  otherwise  he  will  begin  to  die^ — to  die  at  the 
top,  so  to  speak.  It  is  his  right  and  duty  to  be  a  vital 
influence  in  the  lives  he  is  supposed  to  be  shaping. 
The  personalities  entrusted  to  him  he  may  shape  for 
better  or  worse.  It  is  hardly  conceivable  that  he  will 
not  modify  them  at  all.  Yet  if  there  are  three  possi- 
bilities, only  one  of  them  is  tolerable.  He  must  not 
leave  his  timber  as  it  is,  he  must  not  warp  it  more,  he 
must  straighten  it;  and  this  requires  ever-renewed 
vitality. 

And  what  of  the  timber?  What  are  the  rights 
and  duties  of  the  personalities  that  are  to  be  cor- 
rected? We  need  not  consider  obligations  that 
spontaneously  suggest  themselves  on  a  superficial 
consideration,  such  as  the  right  of  the  pupil  to  the 
best  kind  of  correction.  No  teaching  could  be  too 
good  for  our  land  of  promise,  with  the  civilization 
here  to  be  developed.  This  is  obvious.  When  we  pene- 
trate more  deeply,  we  perceive,  first  of  all,  that  not 
every  one  has  the  same  right  to  an  education  in  the 
vernacular.  An  idiot,  for  example,  has  not  the  same 
right  as  a  genius,  nor  in  general  have  those  who  are 
below  the  average  in  capacity  or  attainments  the 
same  right  as  those  who   are  above  it.     Doubtless 


96  THE  CORRECTION  OF  PAPERS 

every  one  in  a  sense  has  a  claim  to  instruction  in 
English,  but  the  point  is  that  some  have  a  better 
claim,  or  a  claim  to  more  of  it,  than  others.  "Who 
are  these?  Clearly,  as  has  been  suggested,  they  who 
have  the  greater  capacity.  It  is  a  law  of  nature  that 
to  those  who  have  shall  be  given.  In  our  teaching 
we  may  well  observe  the  tendencies  of  nature,  fol- 
lowing her  laws,  and  aiding  her  in  the  accomplish- 
ment of  her  purposes.  It  is  said  that  'Whom  the 
Lord  loveth  He  chasteneth.'  An  easy  application 
of  the  text  may  be  made  to  the  teaching  of  English 
composition. 

Moreover,  they  who  show  promise  have  a  right 
not  to  be  herded  in  classes  so  large  as  to  be  unman- 
ageable, where  the  individual  is  lost,  and  where  the 
teacher,  instead  of  being  lifted  up  and  drawing 
young  men  after  him,  must  descend  to  their  level, 
and  appeal,  not  to  the  spirit  of  a  social  group,  but 
to  the  sentiment  of  a  mob.  Extremes  should  be 
avoided.  Large  portions  of  time  should  not  be 
lavished  on  the  correction  of  single  individuals  or 
knots  of  two  or  three,  unless  these  persons  are  ex- 
traordinarily gifted  or  exceedingly  well-trained. 
On  the  other  hand,  an  hour  devoted  to  a  class  of  ten 
or  twelve  is  likely  to  produce  results  more  vital  and 
lasting  than  will  three  hours  a  week  devoted  to  a 
class  of  thirty.  Accordingly,  with  a  given  force  of 
instructors,  and  a  given  number  of  hours  for  Eng- 
lish in  the  schedule,  it  is  better  to  divide  our  forty- 
five  or  thirty  students  into  sections  of  fifteen  or  ten, 
so  as  to  teach  them  properly  when  we  teach  at  all. 


EIGHTS  AND  DUTIES  OF  THE  PUPIL  97 

It  is  to  be  expected  that  Freshmen  and  Sophomores 
will  study  more,  and  will  prepare  better  composi- 
tions, when  they  must  read  their  work  aloud  before 
a  dozen  of  their  fellows  whom  they  have  come  to 
know  as  individuals,  and  in  the  presence  of  a  teacher 
whom  they  meet  in  an  intimate  way,  than  under  any 
other  external  conditions. 

Another  right  of  the  student  may  be  thus  stated. 
We  must  not  require  him  to  read  books  too  rapidly, 
or  to  compose  too  many  themes.  Have  our  teachers 
of  English  a  clear  conscience  as  to  their  exactions  on 
either  score?  And  who  shall  guard  those  guardians 
if  they  lack  a  conscience?  Better  a  little  reading 
carefully  done,  and  a  little  writing  based  upon  ade- 
quate reading  and  reflection,  than  much  hasty  work 
of  any  sort.  Connected  with  the  right  of  the  stu- 
dent to  an  opportunity  for  thought,  and  to  leisure 
for  the  slow  and  often  painful  business  of  expres- 
sion, is  his  just  and  proper  claim  to  some  adequate 
form  of  utterance  or  publication.  It  is  unfair  to 
ask  him  to  write,  week  after  week,  and  month  after 
month,  without  a  single  chance  to  produce  his  best 
in  the  hearing  of  his  fellows.  In  general,  when  his 
papers  are  not  thus  presented,  let  him  take  charge 
of  them  himself,  since  he  is  the  one  who  is  most  in- 
terested in  them.  It  is  bad  for  the  teacher  to  stupefy 
himself  with  them  in  private,  and  the  morality  of 
throwing  them  into  the  waste-basket  is  doubtful. 
"Worse  still  is  an  unseen  public  of  one,  an  assistant, 
not  the  teacher,  who  comes  into  no  personal  contact 
with   the   pupil,   and   whose   humanity  touches  the 


98  THE  COEEECTION  OF  PAPEES 

soul  of  the  writer  of  a  theme  only  through  hiero- 
glyphics on  its  margin. 

Finally,  if  a  youth  has  a  right  to  any  teaching 
whatsoever,  he  has  a  right  to  sympathetic  treatment 
from  the  person  who  corrects  him.  The  impulse  to 
correct,  which  is  natural,  and  is  very  strong  in  some 
teachers,  is  good  only  when,  like  other  natural  im- 
pulses, it  is  properly  regulated.  Doubtless  we  are 
all  acquainted  with  pedantic  men  who  cannot  bridle 
their  tongues  when  another  tongue  has  made  a  slip, 
or  withhold  their  censure  if  another's  pen  has  gone 
astray.  Their  excess  does  not  furnish  an  argument 
against  rigorous  correction  at  intervals;  but  the  wise 
and  sympathetic  teacher  is  likely  to  suppress  some- 
thing like  five  out  of  six  impulses  to  chastise  a 
fault,  keeping  ever  in  mind  the  advice  of  Ben  Jon- 
son,  who  says: 

'There  is  a  time  to  be  given  all  things  for  matur- 
ity, and  that  even  your  country  husbandman  can 
teach,  who  to  a  young  plant  will  not  put  the  prun- 
ing-knife,  because  it  seems  to  fear  the  iron,  as  not 
able  to  admit  the  scar.  No  more  would  I  tell  a 
green  writer  all  his  faults,  lest  I  should  make  him 
grieve  and  faint,  and  at  last  despair;  for  nothing 
doth  more  hurt  than  to  make  him  so  afraid  of  all 
things  as  he  can  endeavor  nothing. '  ^ 

As  to  the  duties  of  the  pupil  little  need  be  said. 
He  must  try  to  tell  the  truth,  and  to  express  it  dis- 
tinctly, in  speech  as  well  as  in  writing.  He  must 
learn  to  be  self -critical,  so  that  he  may  correct  him- 

*  Discoveries,  ed.  by  Castelain,  pp.  88-9. 


TRANSLATION  AND  PAEAPHRASE  99 

self.  This  will  be  accomplished  when  he  is  taught 
to  respect  the  rights  of  others  in  the  subject  he  is 
studying  or  explaining.  His  teacher  has  a  right  to 
the  best  effort  of  every  individual  in  the  class,  and 
should  accept  no  paper  containing  an  obvious  mis- 
take. The  audience  of  the  pupil  has  a  right  to  a 
clear  and  orderly  exposition,  and  to  correct  usage. 
The  word  he  employs  must  correspond  to  the  object 
he  has  in  mind,  and  must  mean  the  same  thing  to 
others  as  to  him.  It  must  therefore  accord  with  the 
meaning  given  in  the  dictionary.  I  plead  for  a 
liberal  use  of  the  dictionary  in  the  teaching  of  Eng- 
lish. 

And  here  I  may  advert  to  a  second  question  of 
direct  utility.  As  a  rule,  our  teachers  of  English 
composition  nowadays  take  little  account  of  the  ad- 
vantages to  be  gained  from  the  exercise  of  para- 
phrasing; that  is,  of  course,  from  paraphrasing 
English  authors  of  the  first  rank.  The  practice  cor- 
responds in  a  way  to  the  training  which  former  gener- 
ations obtained  in  working  with  the  ajicient  classics, 
and  which,  luckily,  a  few  of  our  best  students  still 
secure.  For  the  rest,  paraphrasing  Burke  or  New- 
man or  Ruskin  would  not  be  altogether  different  in 
effect  from  translating  and  otherwise  reworking 
Demosthenes  or  Cicero.  In  the  first  place,  a  worthy 
substance  is  supplied,  meriting  the  pains  that  are 
indispensable  to  an  adequate  re-expression.  Secondly, 
the  student  takes  to  the  practice  by  instinct,  as  any 
one  may  see  from  the  answers  to  examination-ques- 
tions  upon    Burke's    Speech    on    Conciliation;   the 


100  THE  COREECTION  OF  PAPERS 

answers  parody  the  speech.  What  we  need  is  the  di- 
rection of  this  native  impulse  to  the  ends  of  edu- 
cation. As  it  is,  the  student  is  usually  but  half- 
conscious  of  what  he  is  doing,  while  the  examiner 
often  finds  the  imitation  either  ridiculous  or  highly 
objectionable.  It  may  illuminate  the  point  to  cite 
two  examples  that  will  show  how  two  authors,  far 
apart  in  time  and  genius,  and  otherwise  differing  in 
their  education,  consciously  went  about  the  affair  of 
teaching  themselves  to  write.  The  first  of  the  two 
is  the  young  man  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  who  on  Janu- 
ary 15,  1574,  wrote  to  his  friend  and  mentor,  Lan- 
guet: 

*I  intend  to  follow  your  advice  about  composition, 
thus:  I  shall  first  take  one  of  Cicero's  letters  and 
turn  it  into  French ;  then  from  French  into  English, 
and  so  once  more  ...  it  shall  come  round  into  the 
Latin  again.  Perhaps,  too,  I  shall  improve  myself 
in  Italian  by  the  same  exercise. '  ^ 

The  second  is  Poor  Richard,  who,  be  it  remem- 
bered, established  an  English  high  school  in  Phila- 
delphia, and  outlined  for  it  a  plan  of  study  which 
has  by  no  means  lost  its  significance  to-day.  Speak- 
ing of  his  boyhood,  Franklin  says: 

'About  this  time  I  met  with  an  odd  volume  of  the 
Spectator.  It  was  the  third.  I  had  never  before 
seen  any  of  them.  I  bought  it,  read  it  over  and  over, 
and  was  much  delighted  with  it.  I  thought  the 
writing  excellent,  and  wished,  if  possible,  to  imitate 

*  The  Correspondence  of  Sir  Philip  Sidney  and  Hubert  Lan- 
guet,  ed.  by  S.  A.  Pears,  p.  23. 


THE  METHOD  OF  FRANKLIN        IQl 

it.  With  this  view  I  took  some  of  the  papers,  and, 
making  short  hints  of  the  sentiment  in  each  sen- 
tence, laid  them  by  a  few  days,  and  then,  without 
looking  at  the  book,  tried  to  complete  the  papers 
again  by  expressing  each  hinted  sentiment  at  length, 
and  as  fully  as  it  had  been  expressed  before^  in  any 
suitable  words  that  should  come  to  hand.  Then  I 
compared  my  Spectator  with  the  original,  discovered 
some  of  my  faults,  and  corrected  them.  But  I  found 
I  wanted  a  stock  of  words,  or  a  readiness  in  recol- 
lecting and  using  them,  which  I  thought  I  should 
have  acquired  before  that  time  if  I  had  gone  on 
making  verses ;  since  the  continual  occasion  for  words 
of  the  same  import,  but  of  different  length,  to  suit  the 
measure,  or  of  different  sound  for  the  rhyme,  would 
have  laid  me  under  a  constant  necessity  of  search- 
ing for  variety,  and  also  have  tended  to  fix  that  va- 
riety in  my  mind,  and  make  me  master  of  it.  There- 
fore I  took  some  of  the  tales  and  turned  them  into 
verse;  and,  after  a  time,  when  I  had  pretty  well  for- 
gotten the  prose,  turned  them  back  again.  I  also 
sometimes  jumbled  my  collections  of  hints  into  con- 
fusion, and  after  some  weeks  endeavored  to  reduce 
them  into  the  best  order,  before  I  began  to  form  the 
full  sentences  and  complete  the  paper.  This  was  to 
teach  me  method  in  the  arrangement  of  thoughts. 
By  comparing  my  work  afterwards  with  the  origi- 
nal, I  discovered  many  faults  and  amended  them; 
but  I  sometimes  had  the  pleasure  of  fancying  that, 
in  certain  particulars  of  small  import,  I  had  been 
lucky  enough  to  improve  the  method  or  the  language, 
and  this  encouraged  me  to  think  I  might  possibly 
in  time  come  to  be  a  tolerable  English  writer,  of 
which  I  was  extremely  ambitious. '  ^ 

^  The  Autobiography  in  The  Writings  of  Benjamin  FranTclin, 
ed.  by  A.  H.  Smyth,  1.  241-2. 
8 


102  THE  CORRECTION  OF  PAPERS 

Let  us  pass  to  the  rights  and  duties  of  the  State. 
With  reference  to  the  vernacular  its  main  duty  is 
no  secret.  The  State  must  provide  and  encourage 
able  and  well-trained  teachers,  according  them  ample 
means  of  subsistence,  and  a  degree  of  honor  not  far 
below  the  highest.  On  this  head  we  may  give  ear  to 
the  words  of  Milton  in  his  letter  to  Benedetto  Buom- 
mattei  of  Florence: 

'Whoever  in  a  state  knows  how  to  form  wisely  the 
manners  of  men,  and  to  rule  them  at  home  and  in 
war  with  excellent  institutes,  him  in  the  first  place, 
above  others,  I  should  esteem  worthy  of  all  honor; 
but  next  to  him  the  man  who  strives  to  establish  in 
maxims  and  rules  the  method  and  habit  of  speaking 
and  writing  received  from  a  good  age  of  the  nation, 
and,  as  it  were,  to  fortify  the  same  round  with  a 
kind  of  wall,  any  attempt  to  overleap  which  ought 
to  be  prevented  by  a  law  only  short  of  that  of  Romu- 
lus. .  .  .  The  one,  as  I  believe,  supplies  a  noble  cour- 
age and  intrepid  counsels  against  an  enemy  invading 
the  territory.  The  other  takes  to  himself  the  task 
of  extirpating  and  defeating,  by  means  of  a  learned 
detective  police  of  ears,  and  a  light  cavalry  of  good 
authors,  that  barbarism  which  makes  large  inroads 
upon  the  minds  of  men,  and  is  a  destructive  intest- 
ine enemy  to  genius.  Nor  is  it  to  be  considered  of 
small  consequence  what  language,  pure  or  corrupt, 
a  people  has,  or  what  is  their  customary  degree  of 
propriety  in  speaking  it;  .  .  .  for,  let  the  words  of 
a  country  be  in  part  unhandsome  and  offensive  in 
themselves,  in  part  debased  by  wear  and  wrongly 
uttered,  and  what  do  they  declare  but,  by  no  light 
indication,  that  the  inhabitants  of  that  country  are 
an  indolent,  idly-yawning  race,  with  minds  already 
long  prepared  for  any  amount  of  servility?    On  the 


RIGHTS  AND  DUTIES  OF  THE  STATE  103 

other  hand,  we  have  never  heard  that  any  empire, 
any  state,  did  not  flourish  moderately  at  least,  as 
long  as  liking  and  care  for  its  own  language  lasted. 
Therefore,  Benedetto,  if  only  you  proceed  to  perform 
vigorously  this  labor  of  yours  for  your  native  state, 
behold  clearly,  even  from  this,  what  a  fair  and  solid 
affection  you  will  necessarily  win  from  your  own 
countrymen.  All  this  I  say,  not  because  I  suppose 
you  to  be  ignorant  of  any  of  it,  but  because  I  per- 
suade myself  that  you  are  much  more  intent  on  the 
consideration  of  what  you  yourself  can  do  for  your 
country  than  of  what  your  country  will,  by  the  best 
right,  owe  to  you. '  ^ 

So  much  for  Milton's  letter  to  Buommattei,  with 
the  warning  it  contains  for  our  own  generation,  and 
the  application  we  may  make  of  it  to  the  duties  of 
the  State.  Turning  now  to  the  question  of  rights, 
one  may  argue  as  follows.  The  State  demands  an 
education  in  the  vernacular  which  shall  do  the  great- 
est good  to  the  greatest  number;  this  does  not  neces- 
sarily mean  conferring  an  equal  benefit  upon  every 
individual.  Under  certain  circumstances  it  might 
signify  the  careful  education  of  a  few  because  of  the 
preponderant  influence  to  be  exerted  upon  the  lan- 
guage by  a  relatively  small  body  of  persons,  such  as 
poets,  orators,  clergymen,  editors,  and  teachers;  a 
small  body,  that  is,  in  comparison  with  the  popula- 
tion as  a  whole.  If  we  consider,  not  the  present 
generation  alone,  but  future  generations  also,  as  con- 
cerned in  our  present  stage  of  education,  we  may  ad- 

^  Translated  (from  the  Latin)  in  Masson,  Life  of  Milton  in 
Connexion  with  the  History  of  Ms  Time,  1881,  1.  790. 


104  THE  CORRECTION  OF  PAPERS 

mit  that  thoroughly  training  a  few  persons  of  un- 
usual capacity  is  of  greater  advantage  to  the  State 
than  a  superficial  culture  of  many.  Accordingly, 
these  reflections  on  the  correction  of  papers  turn 
out  to  be  a  plea  for  cherishing  the  more  talented 
among  our  students  who  show  promise  of  becoming 
influential  in  maintaining  the  purity  of  the  English 
language,  and  in  rectifying  the  present  debased  us- 
age by  means  of  a  standard  received  from  a  good 
age  of  the  nation.  It  is,  above  all,  a  plea  for  safe- 
guarding the  interests  of  those  who  may  become 
teachers  of  English.  Such  a  plea  is  never  untimely ; 
it  cannot  be  urged  too  often.  The  rights  of  the 
average  student  are  in  no  peril,  save  as  they  are 
implicated  in  the  rights  of  neglected  potential 
leaders;  and  the  claims  of  those  who  are  below  the 
average — of  the  Jukes  family  and  the  bad  scions  of 
the  Kallikaks — will  not  in  this  humanitarian  age  go 
unnoticed.  The  poor,  and  their  champions,  we  have 
always  with  us. 


VII 

LITERATURE    FOR    ENGINEERS' 

WHAT  sort  of  literature  should  an  engineer  take 
for  his  private  reading  ?  Next,  how  should  he 
read  it?  Thirdly — a  question  which  must  precede  the 
other  two,  and  the  answer  to  which  will  really  contain 
an  answer  to  them — why  should  he  read  at  all  ? 

To  discuss  this  subject  with  a  considerable  body  of 
engineers  themselves  is  a  pleasure  and  a  privilege. 
Upon  the  students,  gathered  here  and  there  through- 
out our  country,  which  such  a  body  represents,  de- 
pends to  no  slight  extent  the  tone  of  many  of  our  larger 
institutions  of  learning.  At  several  universities  the 
schools  of  engineering  contain  the  largest  section  of  the 
student  population ;  and  what  is  more,  no  other  section 
consists  so  largely  of  picked  men.  That  American  uni- 
versity life  as  a  whole  is  profoundly  influenced  by  the 
beliefs  and  aspirations  of  the  engineer  may  appeal  to 
him  as  a  conception  in  some  degree  novel.  That  the 
influence  he  exerts  upon  his  fellows  in  other  branches 
of  study  carries  with  it  an  obligation  on  his  part  will 
not,  we  may  hope,  strike  him  as  paradoxical;  for  on 

*  Adapted  from  an  address  delivered  before  the  Colleges  of 
Civil  and  Mechanical  Engineering  of  Cornell  University,  The 
address  was  first  printed  in  The  Sibley  Journal  of  Engineering, 
Cornell  University,  for  May,  1908y  pp.  286-300,  and  subse- 
quently appeared  as  a  privately  issued  pamphlet,  Ithaca,  New 
York,  1909. 

105 


106  LITEEATUEE  FOE  ENGINEEES 

the  ground  that  he  owes  something  to  men  in  other 
fields,  and  to  his  university  as  well  as  his  special  de- 
partment, reposes  much  that  is  to  be  said  to  him  on  the 
score  of  reading.  We  do  not  ask  him,  for  example,  to 
read  good  literature  because  so-called  academical  stu- 
dents are  supposed  to  read  more  than  he ;  but  we  ask 
him  to  read  more  because  those  academical  students  do 
not  read  enough.  So  far  as  my  observation  goes,  it  is 
the  simple  fact  that  we  have  in  the  better  American 
schools  of  engineering  a  larger  proportion  of  men  who 
really  care  for  good  literature,  and  would  read  it  with- 
out the  stimulus  of  formal  instruction,  than  we  find  in 
most  colleges  and  departments  of  liberal  arts.  At  the 
same  time  one  should  not  forget  that  the  best-read  men 
are  still  to  be  met  where  we  should  expect  them,  cling- 
ing to  what  is  left  of  the  older  classical  training. 

In  any  case,  there  is  at  the  moment  no  call  in  any 
single  institution  for  the  arraignment  of  deficiencies 
which,  if  they  exist,  arise  from  general  conditions  in 
technical  education  throughout  the  country,  and  even 
throughout  the  Western  hemisphere.  And  if  we  are 
indeed  to  moralize,  let  us  not,  on  the  other  hand,  des- 
cant upon  any  form  of  self-seeking,  cultural  or  what 
not.  Far  be  it  from  a  teacher  of  literature,  of  the  most 
social  of  all  the  arts,  to  say  to  any  man,  'Go  to ;  read 
niow  this,  that,  land  the  other  literary  masterpiece — read 
Milton,  read  Shakespeare — simply  for  your  own  sake, ' 
for  the  sake  of  what  is  called  self-improvement.  If 
true  culture  is  essentially  and  inherently  social,  if  it  is 
inherently  self-denying,  sympathetic,  we  had  better 
realise  this  inherent  and  essential  nature  of  the  thing 
at  the  outset. 


INFLUENCE  OF  THE  ENGINEER  107 

Herein,  accordingly,  we  find  the  immediate  answer 
to  the  question  why  the  engineer,  or  any  other  citizen, 
should  read  only  what  is  good.  He  will  read  in  order 
that  he  may  be  a  good,  helpful,  efficient  citizen,  per- 
forming, and  performing  well,  not  only  his  special  and 
technical,  but  also  his  general  and  humaner,  functions 
as  a  part  of  the  body  politic.  Now  the  life  of  the  State, 
like  the  life  of  every  great  fitting-school  for  the  State, 
amounts  to  something  more  than  meat,  or,  in  the  cur- 
rent parlance,  bread  and  butter ;  and  amounts  to  more 
than  the  pulsating  network  of  roads  and  bridges  that 
our  engineers  will  help  to  extend,  by  means  of  which 
in  coming  years  the  food  for  a  hundred  millions  of 
Americans  will  be  transported.  The  higher  national 
life  will  not  be  wholly  independent  of  food  and 
raiment  and  the  newer  means  of  distribution,  but  it 
must  be  more  than  they.  It  will  not  be  unsubstantial, 
unfounded,  but  it  must  be  more  than  body  or  material. 
In  this  higher  national  life  each  individual  has  his 
right  and  share,  which  he  can  obtain  only  by  communi- 
cating what  is  best  in  him  to  his  fellows.  Very  briefly, 
then,  the  first  reason  why  any  one  of  us  should  busy 
himself  with  literature— with  the  best  thoughts  of  the 
best  men — is  that  he  may  react  beneficially  upon  his 
neighbor.  Has  not  the  engineering  student  a  powerful 
impulse,  when  he  finds  something  good  in  a  book,  to 
read  it  aloud  to  his  room-mate?  And  the  first  appli- 
cation of  this  principle  will  bring  in  the  obligation  we 
have  noted,  that  is,  the  debt  which  our  altruistic  stu- 
dent of  engineering,  who  would  like  to  read  Shake- 
speare for  himself,  owes  to  his  benighted  brother,  the 


108  LITERATURE  FOR  ENGINEERS 

academic,  who  puts  his  trust  in  formal  courses,  and 
reads  Shakespeare  mainly  as  an  imposed  task.  Courses 
in  literature  are  good  after  their  fashion,  very  good  for 
the  man  who  is  free,  and  knows  how  to  use  them.  Yet 
it  is  hardly  desirable  to  ask  for  the  intrusion  of  non- 
technical courses  upon  a  technical  curriculum  that 
is  already  overcrowded  with  special  studies.  For 
the  present,  no  greater  general  blessing  could  de- 
scend on  our  professional  schools  than  the  adoption 
of  some  arrangement  whereby  their  students  should 
be  led  to  employ  the  proper  amount  of  time  in  pri- 
vate non-technical  reading — ^the  amount  of  time  each 
day  which  a  well-conditioned  mind  does  so  employ. 
Such  an  arrangement  would  not  materially  hurt  the 
engineer,  and  would  go  far  towards  clearing  the 
intellectual  atmosphere  of  more  than  one  university. 
Let  us  turn,  however,  to  something  more  specific. 
The  question  why  we  should  read  or  study  Shake- 
speare or  Milton  is  closely  related  to  another.  What 
is  the  precise  effect  of  good  literature  upon  the  indi- 
vidual who  reads  or  hears  it  ?  What  sensations,  and 
what  inner  experiences,  should  you  meet  with  when 
you  read  aloud  the  best  poem  of  Tennyson  or  Kip- 
ling? Very  rare  is  the  individual  who  has  even 
tried  to  define  and  localize  the  chilly  creepings  that 
are  felt  in  the  scalp  and  down  the  back  of  the  neck, 
and  on  either  side  the  spine,  whenever  the  particu- 
lar melody  is  heard  which  that  particular  soul  likes 
best.  Still  fewer  are  they  who  have  paid  attention 
to  the  effects,  whether  bodily  or  spiritual,  that  the 
reading  of  good  poetry  produces  on  the  man  who 


THE  FUNCTION  OF  EEADING  109 

understands  it.  Yet  it  is  just  such  relations  of  cause 
and  effect  that  men  of  science  are  supposed  to  find 
interesting.  "When  you  have  discovered  that  one 
thing  causes  or  invariably  precedes  another,  you  as- 
sume that  you  know  something  about  each  of  them. 
When  you  observe  that  the  application  of  heat  to 
water  generates  steam,  you  have  a  form  of  knowl- 
edge that  may  prove  useful.  What,  then,  is  gener- 
ated by  the  proper  application  of  a  literary  master- 
piece to  a  human  being  who  is  prepared  to  receive 
it?  By  way  of  anticipation,  let  us  reply:  some  kind 
of  power. 

This  question  concerning  the  proper  effect  of  liter- 
ature belongs  under  a  still  more  inclusive  problem, 
namely:  Whait  is  the  effect,  the  proper  effect,  of  the 
liberal  arts  in  general?  In  other  words,  when  we 
say  that  literature  is  the  chief  of  the  liberal  arts, 
what  do  we  mean?  'Liberal'?  The  word  looks  like 
'liberty' — is,  in  fact,  connected  with  it  by  deriva,- 
tion;  and  liberty  means  freedom.  What  have  any 
of  the  arts  to  do  with  that?  In  what  sense  is  litera- 
ture a  free  art?  In  what  respect  or  from  what  re- 
straints does  it  enfranchise  or  emancipate?  Not  to 
engage  ourselves  too  far  with  etymologies,  we  may 
say  that  the  history  of  the  term  'liberal  arts'  allows 
us  to  explain  the  effect  of  the  best  literature  some- 
what as  follows.  The  best  literature,  and  by  that  is 
meant  the  best  poetry,  generates  in  us  a  power  or 
pleasure  that  is  not  servile,  a  pleasure  that  only  a 
free  man  can  fully  enjoy.  The  man  that  does  not 
enjoy  good  poetry  is  not  free;  and  the  man  that  is 


110  LITERATURE  FOR  ENGINEERS 

afraid  of  it  is  the  slave  of  a  timorous  delusion,  afraid 
of  a  power  that  he  affects  to  despise.  But  free  from 
what,  and  how? 

I  must  ask  the  engineer,  the  man  of  science,  to 
test  what  I  now  sa,y  by  his  own  experience  as  soon 
as  he  can,  and  not  once  but  many  times,  so  that  he 
may  be  sure  of  the  details  of  his  experiment,  and 
sure  of  his  results.  Let  him  choose  the  best  poem 
that  he  knows;  in  order  to  avoid  mistakes,  let  him 
choose  the  last  act  of  Ki/ng  Lear  or  Othello,  or  the 
last  book  of  Paradise  Lost,  or  the  twenty-second  book 
of  the  Iliad  in  the  translation  by  Lang,  Leaf,  and 
Myers.  In  any  case  let  him  make  certain  that  his 
chosen  passage  is  of  the  best,  and  that  it  is  reason- 
ably long.  Let  him  make  certain  that  he  under- 
stands it.  "When  he  knows  it  well,  let  him  read  it 
aloud,  with  all  the  emphasis  and  feeling  he  can 
muster.  Then  let  him  take  a  hand-glass  and  look  at 
his  eye.  If  he  is  quick  enough,  he  may  find  the 
pupil  dilating — like  a  song-bird's,  doubtless,  when 
he  sings,  or  a  parrot's  when  he  talks.  We  say  that 
the  song-bird  is  inspired.  So  he  is;  and  so  is  the 
man.  Both  bird  and  man  are  taking  deeper,  freer 
breaths  than  when  they  ate  their  dinners.  The 
man's  pulse,  if  he  tries  it,  is  a  trifle  more  rapid  than 
usual,  possibly  more  regular;  there  is  a  feeling  of 
harmony  in  his  bodily  frame.  His  step  is  more 
elastic.    His  motions,  as  we  say,  are  freer. 

If  he  happens  already  to  be  a  fearless  lover  of  the 
best  literature,  and  if  he  makes  his  test  one  of  suf- 
ficient duration,  he  wiU  also  have  certain  inner  ex- 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  READING  m 

periences  that  are  very  powerful,  though  he  may 
never  before  have  observed  them  with  accuracy. 
The  sense  of  bodily  well-being  is  paralleled  by  an 
inner  elevation  or  exaltation  of  spirit.  *A  few  days 
ago,'  said  Bouchardon,  a  French  sculptor  of  the 
eighteenth  century — *A  few  days  ago,  an  old  French 
book  that  I  never  heard  of  fell  into  my  hands.  It 
is  called  the  Iliad  of  Homer.  Since  I  read  that  book 
men  are  fifteen  feet  high  to  me,  and  I  cannot  sleep. '  ^ 
The  reader  is  wide  awake,  bold  for  action.  The  ap- 
prehensions that  but  an  hour  since  crowded  upon 
him  have  dispersed  into  nothingness.  His  sympathy 
with  his  fellow-men  asserts  itself,  but  begins  to  lose 
itself  immediately  in  anticipated  efforts  for  their 
welfare.  "Were  an  opportunity  present  for  such 
effort,  were  an  object  of  human  pity  before  him,  his 
emotion  would  be  instantly  transmuted  into  an  un- 
conscious act  of  charity.  His  feelings  are  aroused. 
His  intellect  likewise  is  quicker  and  more  effective, 

^  So  the  anecdote  is  given  by  Paul  Shorey  in  his  edition  (1901, 
p.  xviii)  of  Books  1,  6,  22,  24,  of  Pope's  translation  of  the  Iliad. 
A  slightly  different  version  appears  in  Joseph  Warton's  Essay 
on  the  Genius  and  Writings  of  Pope,  1782,  2.  33-5:  '  A  very  in- 
genious French  nobleman,  the  Count  de  Caylus,  has  lately 
printed  a  valuable  treatise  entitled  Tableaux  tires  de  I'lliad  et 
de  rOdyssee  d'Eomere.  .  .  .  Among  the  few  who  borrowed  their 
subjects  from  Homer,  he  mentions  Bouchardon  with  the  honor 
he  deserves,  and  relates  the  following  anecdote:  "  This  greiat 
artist,  having  lately  read  Homer  in  an  old  and  detestable  French 
translation,  came  one  day  to  me,  his  eyes  sparkling  with  fire,  and 
siaid :  Depuis  que  j  'ai  lu  ce  livre,  les  hommes  ont  quinse  pieds,  et 
la  nature  s'est  accrue  pour  moi." — "  Since  I  have  read  this 
book,  men  seem  to  be  fifteen  feet  high,  and  all  nature  is  enlarged 
in  my  sight."  '    In  a  footnote  Walton  refers  to  Caylus,  p.  227. 


112  LITERATURE  FOR  ENGINEERS 

begins  grouping  details  under  general  heads,  formu- 
lates plans,  instantaneously  perceives  the  relation  of 
means  to  ends.  If  the  reader  is  well-taught  and  wise, 
he  will  continue  no  longer  in  an  idle  contemplation 
of  his  own  mental  states,  nor  luxuriate  in  the  warmth 
of  this  bodily  and  inward  enjoyment;  he  will  attack 
one  of  those  daily  tasks  that  a  little  while  ago  seemed 
formidable,  but  now  seem  moderate  and  feasible. 
And  he  will  finish  it  in  one-half  the  time  he  had  ex- 
pected it  would  consume.  If  he  can  convince  a  friend 
or  two  that  successful,  fearless — and  we  may  add, 
reverent — activity  is  the  final  product  of  good  poetry, 
properly  read,  he  may  regard  the  experiment  as 
brilliantly  concluded. 

The  specific  effects  of  literature,  and  of  the  differ- 
ent forms  of  literature,  no  doubt,  are  various;  vary- 
ing as  the  supple  human  spirit  which  literature  tries 
to  image.  Yet  on  the  basis  of  our  experiment  let  us 
suppose  that  the  most  general  and  characteristic 
effects  of  the  best  literature  are  a  sense  of  bodily 
well-being,  and  a  less  tangible,  but  very  real,  sense 
of  spiritual  elevation  or  exaltation,  not  wholly  differ- 
ent from  the  feeling  produced  in  us  by  the  best 
music;  a  sense  of  freedom  from  fear,  of  unhampered 
ability  to  act,  of  pleasure  in  contemplating  and  per- 
forming our  duties  toward  family  and  State.  How, 
then,  shall  we  know  what  is  good,  what  will  produce 
these  effects,  otherwise  than  by  this  experiment? 
For  the  experiment  itself  presupposes  some  one,  a 
teacher  or  the  like,  to  tell  us  what  is  good,  in  the 
first  place.     The  dilemma  after  aU  is  not  absolutely 


SELF-PROTECTION  IN   READING  113 

baffling.  In  the  nutrition  of  our  minds  nature  has 
not  left  us  more  helpless  than  in  the  care  of  our 
bodies.  In  general  we  hasten  to  the  medical  man  in 
order  to  hear  from  the  gray  chin  of  wisdom  the  pre- 
cepts on  bodily  health  that  our  own  common  sense 
has  already  suggested,  and  to  fortify  our  own  wills, 
shameful  to  say,  by  invoking  the  will  of  a  stranger. 
Is  the  teacher  of  literature  to  be  asked,  then,  what  an 
engineer  ought  to  read,  and  what  he  ought  not? 
Has  not  the  engineer's  own  common  sense  told  him  a 
hundred  times  what  nutriment  his  better  part  should 
receive,  and  what  stimulants  it  should  forego?  Does 
he  not  realize  perfectly  well  that  he  may  and  ought 
to  dine  with  Shakespeare  and  Milton,  and  not  with 
the  Sunday  press?  Is  it  not  clear  to  everybody  that 
in  the  choice  of  books  one  may  and  ought  to  be  select, 
shutting  his  eye  against  the  bad  ?  And  what  shall  he 
do  when  he  has  read  a  few  poems  of  Milton  and  Shake- 
speare? Read  them  again!  Reread  them  until  the 
experiment  we  have  described  begins  to  work;  for 
it  will  work,  just  as  surely  as  the  engineer  is  a 
normal  man  and  they  are  poems  for  all  time.  It 
cannot  possibly  help  working,  if  only  the  experi- 
menter will  become  so  familiar  with  King  Lear  and 
The  Tempest,  with  Comns  and  Samson  Agonistes, 
that  they  continually  ring  in  his  ears,  and  rise  to  his 
lips  when  he  begins  to  speak.  Let  him  avoid  all 
books  that  he  is  not  sure  about.  This  or  that  one 
may  be  very  good;  but  until  the  judgment  of  time, 
that  is,  the  accumulated  wisdom  of  many  well-trained 
critics,  has  grappled  with  it,  he  must  be  content  to 


114  LITERATURE  FOR  ENGINEERS 

set  it  aside  as  doubtful.  He  is  a  student  in  a  techni- 
cal school,  or  he  is  a  practising  engineer,  or  he  is  any 
sort  of  intelligent  professional  man  you  choose.  His 
spare  moments  are  few.  He  is  not  the  type  of  man 
that  likes  to  make  mistakes.  He  is  aware  that  he 
will  not  be  making  a  mistake  if  he  reads  Homer  or 
Dante  in  the  best  English  translation,  or  Shake- 
speare, or  the  English  Bible,  or  Milton.  If  during 
his  leisure  hours  he  will  read  them  and  little  else  for 
the  next  two  or  three  years,  and  will  eschew  all 
popular  magazines,  he  never  will  make  another  sad 
mistake  about  books ;  if  he  keeps  the  practice  up,  in 
the  end  he  will  have  what  is  known  as  taste.  The 
acquisition  of  taste  calls  for  a  certain  amount  of  self- 
denial;  taste  nowadays  almost  invariably  is  acquired 
outside  of  school,  if  at  all.  But  we  assume  that  our 
professional  student  is  possessed  of  initiative  and  a 
vigorous  will.  This  latter  is  an  instrument  that  is 
well-nigh  indispensable  in  obtaining  anything  worth 
while. 

This  list  of  authors  unquestionably  is  brief.  One 
can  hardly  say  it  is  narrow.  It  is  drawn  up  in  ac- 
cordance with  an  Old  Latin  maxim^  of  literary  faith 
— non  multa,  sed  multum;  read,  not  many  things, 
but  much.  If  more  extended  counsel  is  desired,  and 
a  longer  list,  one  may  go  to  Sir  John  Lubbock  and 
Mr.  Frederic  Harrison,  both  of  whom  have  written 
with  intelligence  and  enthusiasm  on  the  choice  of 
books.  Yet  we  must  bear  in  mind  that  any  selec- 
tion like  Sir  John  Lubbock's  of  the  'hundred  best 

1  Origiimliy  Greek :  ov  ttoXXo  dWa  iroiKv- 


A  BRIEF  LIST  OF  AUTHORS  115 

books'  is  sure  to  omit  something  that  the  next  com- 
piler would  include,  and  may  easily  contain  some- 
thing injurious  to  the  reader  who  accepts  the  list  un- 
critically. It  is  much  easier  to  mention  five  authors, 
a  real  acquaintance  with  whom  would  constitute  a 
liberal  education,  than  to  mention  fifty.  Nor  would 
it  be  difficult  to  recall  a  number  of  great  historical 
personages  who,  like  Abraham  Lincoln,  were  men  of 
few  books,  but  knew  a  few  things  well.  We  hear  of 
such  cases  more  frequently  than  we  hear  of  any  who 
try  to  emulate  them.  Perhaps  the  imitation  does 
not  seem  unpractical  enough. 

So  much  on  why  we  read  literature,  and  on  what 
to  read.  We  read  what  gives  us  power  and  freedom, 
and  we  read  it  because  it  gives  us  power  and  freedom. 
If  we  cannot  solve  these  questions  off-hand  for  our- 
selves, we  have  the  judgment  of  the  past  to  guide 
us.  Now  then,  how  shall  we  read?  First  of  all,  read 
aloud.  Every  bit  of  literature  properly  so  called 
that  history  has  to  show  is  intended,  not  for  the  eye 
primarily,  but  for  the  ear.  Every  line  of  Shake- 
speare, every  line  of  Milton,  is  meant  to  be  pro- 
nounced, cannot  be  duly  appreciated  until  it  is  pro- 
nounced. Often  an  entire  masterpiece  remains  dark 
and  forbidding,  merely  because  the  reader  has  sought 
to  interpret  it  with  the  eye  alone.  For  example, 
doubtless  many  a  professional  man  has  never  felt 
quite  ready  to  take  up  Paradise  Lost;  and  indeed  it 
might  be  well  to  begin  the  reading  of  Milton  with 
Samson  Agonistes.  Yet  no  one  who  is  fond  of  or- 
chestral music  can  long  resist  Milton  in  any  shape. 


116  LITERATURE  FOR  ENGINEERS 

if  only  he  learns  how  to  reproduce!  the  beat  and  swell 
and  cadence  of  Milton  aloud.  In  my  experience  as 
teacher  I  recall  among  my  few  and  modest  triumphs 
the  cases  of  several  students  who  thought  themselves 
hopelessly  blind  to  Paradise  Lost,  when  their  actual 
infirmity  was  nothing  but  an  easily  cured  deafness. 
Unsealing  their  ears  unlocked  to  them  the  doors  of 
a  Paradise  with  melodies  not  to  be  heard  elsewhere 
in  English  verse. 

Very  much  of  what  we  call  prose — Bacon's  essay 
Of  Death,  for  example,  and  passages  in  his  Advance- 
ment of  Learning — is  in  the  truest  sense  poetry,  and 
loses  half  its  significance  when  followed  only  with 
the  eye.  Literary  men,  that  is,  men  who  write  with 
imagination,  are  often  *  ear-minded, '  as  we  say.  In 
the  act  of  composition,  they  hear  what  they  are  about 
to  write;  whereas  other  persons  are  perhaps  more 
often  *  eye-minded.'  The  ordinary  man,  sitting  at  his 
desk,  pen  in  hand,  is  likely  to  see  his  next  sentence, 
or  a  part  of  it,  in  his  mind's  eye,  a  moment  or  two 
before  he  will  record  the  words  on  paper.  The  chief 
hindrance  to  his  appreciation  of  the  best  literature 
may  be  that  he  never  has  been  accustomed  to  hear 
the  words  that  he  sees. 

But  we  must  not  be  content  with  hearing  them. 
When  we  read,  we  must,  if  necessary,  smell  and  feel 
and  taste  them.  That  is  to  say,  reading  means  trans- 
lating the  visible  marks  on  the  printed  page  into 
terms  of  all  the  senses.  Hence,  if  it  be  asked,  'How 
shall  I  read  Shakespeare?'  the  answer  is,  'Read  him 


BEAD  ALOUD  AND  SLOWLY  117 

with  alert  bodily  senses.'    When  tlie  GhoBt  in  Ham- 
let says, 

But  soft;  methinks  I  scent  the  morning's  air, 
one  must  try  to  recall  what  the  ozone  at  dawn  smells 
like,  since  it  is  the  earliest  sign  of  day.  If  we  do 
translate  the  diction  into  terms  of  the  several  senses, 
the  inner  meaning  of  Shakespeare  or  Milton  will  not 
often  escape  us. 

The  process  of  making  monotonous  black  charac- 
ters on  the  page  vividly  stir  the  latent  sense-per- 
ceptions is,  however,  relatively  slow  and  irksome. 
Few  people  have  ever  learned  to  do  it  consistently; 
and  hence,  it  is  fair  to  say,  few  have  ever  truly  learned 
to  read.  The  moral  is,  read  slowly.  Take  ample 
time.  Pause  where  the  punctuation  bids  one  pause; 
note  each  and  every  comma ;  wait  a  moment  between 
a  period  and  the  next  capital  letter.  And  pause 
when  common  sense  bids  you  pause,  that  is,  when 
you  have  not  understood.  As  the  line  of  sentences 
comes  filing  before  the  window  of  your  soul,  examine 
each  individual  expression  with  the  animus,  and  more 
than  the  animus,  you  would  maintain  were  you  pay- 
ing-teller in  a  bank;  saying  to  yourself  continually, 
*Do  I  know  this  word?'  and,  'What  is  this  phrase 
worth  ? '  Toward  what  they  see  in  print  many  people, 
otherwise  shrewd  and  sensible,  are  strangely  credu- 
lous ;  what  they  find  in  a  book  they  instinctively  think 
must  be  true.  Yet  books  are  not  more  trustworthy 
than  the  men  who  write  them;  the  number  of  mis- 
guided and  misleading  books  is  infinite.  Good  books 
are  rare. 
9 


llg  LITEEATURE  EOR  ENGINEERS 

Read  aloud;  read  slowly;  read  suspiciously.  Re- 
read. What  a  busy  man  has  time  to  read  at  all,  he 
has  time  to  read  more  than  once.  "Was  it  not  Emer- 
son who  held  that  he  could  not  afford  to  own  a  book 
until  it  was  ten  years  old — had  at  least  to  that  ex- 
tent proved  its  ability  to  survive?  Jealous  of  his 
time,  he  let  others  sift  the  ashes.  And  was  it  not 
Schopenhauer  who  considered  no  book  worth  while 
that  was  not  worth  a  third  perusal?  If  we  read  a 
thing  but  once,  that  usually  is  but  so  much  lost  time. 
The  most  industrious  student  forgets  a  large  part 
of  what  he  tries  to  retain.  The  best-read  man  is  the 
one  who  has  oftenest  read  the  best  things;  who  goes 
through  Homer,  Plato,  Dante,  Shakespeare,  Milton, 
and  the  Bible,  once  a  year.  A  veteran  teacher  of 
English,  whoi  had  a  long  and  effective  career  in  one  of 
our  eastern  colleges,  was  approached  by  a  student 
on  some  minor  point  in  Hamlet.  'Don't  search  me 
too  deeply,'  begged  the  teacher;  'I  haven't  looked 
at  Hamlet  in  six  months.'  "When,  therefore,  we  re- 
ceive, as  the  ultimate  counsel  on  reading,  the  maxim, 
Non  multa,  sed  multum,  'Not  many  things,  but  much,* 
'much'  signifies,  in  part,  'with  great  frequency.' 

From  this  more  general  discussion  of  why,  what, 
and  how,  let  us  pass  to  a  number  of  concrete  sug- 
gestions about  reading,  suitable  to  the  needs  and 
opportunities  of  men  engaged  in  a  non-literary  pro- 
fession. 

First.  Select  for  your  private  property,  as  it 
were,  some  one  standard  author;  one  with  whom 
you  mean  to  keep   company  for  ten  years.     Love 


AN  AUTHOE   AS   PLAYMATE  J 19 

him  as  the  wolf  loves  the  lamb — swallow  him  whole. 
Yet,  on  second  thought,  do  not  bolt  him.  Gradually 
masticate  all  that  he  has  written,  and  the  best  of 
what  has  been  written  about  him.  Try  to  pierce  the 
secret  of  his  life  and  activity.  The  proper  study  of 
mankind  is  biography.  When  you  have  found  his 
secret,  it  will  probably  bear  a  resemblance  to  some- 
thing within  yourself,  and  that,  too,  no  matter  how 
gigantic  your  hero  may  look  to  you  at  first,  or  how 
remote  his  interests  may  seem  from  yours.  The  in- 
terests of  all  men  and  all  ages  are  much  the  same, 
in  kind  if  not  in  vigor.  Accordingly,  when  you  are 
casting  about  for  a  fish,  do  not  be  afraid  of  landing 
one  that  is  too  big.  You  may  have  the  swiftest  and 
strongest  in  the  ocean,  almost  for  the  asking.  The 
big  fellows  are  always  swimming  in  clear  view. 
There  is  that  leviathan  Homer.  You  may  draw  him 
out  with  a  hook — out  of  the  book-market  with  an 
eighty-cent  silver  hook;  and  you  may  play  with  him 
as  with  a  bird.  Hugest  of  beasts  that  swim,  he  is 
the  most  amiable  and  amusing  of  household  pets. 
The  most  fortunate  and  enviable  of  householders  are 
those  who,  having  a  fair  portion  of  this  world's 
goods  and  friends,  have  early  in  life  caught  a  sub- 
stantial author  for  a  playmate.  To  know  his  ways 
does  not  require  much  time.  Many  a  business  man 
gives  more  time  to  his  dog;  and  the  dog  will  live 
only  a  dozen  years. 

Secondly.  Have  a  few  good  books,  of  various 
sorts,  not  set  on  a  shelf,  but  lying  on  a  table  where 
they  can  be  easily  opened.    If  you  are,  or  think  you 


120  LITERATUEE  FOR  ENGINEERS 

are,  an  unusually  hard-working  man,  have  the  table 
near  your  bed,  and  read  a  little  each  night  before 
you  go  to  sleep.  That  may  possibly  be  a  strain  on 
your  eyes;  but  eye-strain  is  preferable  to  mental 
starvation.  Turn  at  least  ten  pages  in  some  good 
book  every  day.  That  will  allow  you  3650  pages 
every  year,  which  is  about  equivalent  to  Homer, 
Dante,  Shakespeare,  Milton,  and  the  Old  Testament, 
in  texts  or  versions  easily  accessible.  The  better  the 
book,  the  more  valuable  the  twenty  minutes  you 
give  to  it.  And  let  no  one  object  that  good  litera- 
ture is  hard  or  uninteresting,  or  wearying  to  a  mind 
already  tired.  The  objection  is  a  sure  sign  that  the 
person  who  makes  it  is  speaking  without  experience. 
He  has  not  tried  our  experiment.  He  has  second- 
rate  books,  or  no  books,  or  even  bad  books,  on  his 
table.  Cultivate  also  the  acquaintance  of  pocket- 
editions — in  Everyman's  Library  (published  by  But- 
ton) or  The  World's  Classics  (Oxford  Press)  or 
The  Temple  Primers  and  Temple  Classics  (Button). 
One  of  the  most  widely-read  men  I  know  makes  it 
his  boast  that  he  never  had  a  course  in  'English,' 
and  has  done  most  of  his  reading  on  the  train. 

Thirdly.  Read  in  company.  As  we  observed  be- 
fore, literature  is  a  social  art.  In  cultivating  it  we 
should  set,  and  not  follow,  the  fashion.  If  you  are 
a  univei-sity  student,  read  with  your  room-mate,  and 
have  a  tender  care  for  his  taste.  Above  all,  read 
aloud.  Organize  readings  for  Sunday  afternoon  at 
your  fraternity-house  or  club.  The  Greek-letter 
societies   originally    had   some   connection   or   other 


GOOD  BOOKS  IN  THE  HOME  X21 

with  the  pursuit  of  literature.  Their  extraordinary 
growth  in  our  great  schools  of  technology  and  ap- 
plied science  is  one  of  the  strange  developments  in 
American  education.  Why  not  restore  to  them  some- 
thing of  their  lost  function?  It  may  be  that  they 
have  emigrated  from  their  birth-place,  where  Greek 
was  taught,  to  the  very  end  of  preserving  the  cul- 
ture of  the  land. 

The  technical  student  should  also  look  forward  to 
the  time  when  he  will  again  be  in  his  home,  and  pre- 
pare himself  to  read  and  listen  there.  In  recent 
years  there  has  been  harsh  criticism  all  over  the 
country  of  the  methods  in  vogue  in  the  teaching  of 
English.  Some  of  it  is  justified  in  so  far  as  the 
teachers  are  ill-prepared  for  their  work,  though  the 
nation  is  culpable  in  not  providing  better  prepara- 
tion for  them.  Yet  the  teachers  of  English  are  con- 
fronted by  an  almost  insoluble  problem.  They  are 
virtually  asked  to  accomplish  by  artificial  stimulus 
in  school  and  college  what  ought  to  be  done  naturally 
in  the  home.  In  the  university,  they  are  expected 
to  give  young  men  between  the  ages  of  eighteen  and 
twenty-one  a  feeling  for  literature  that  usually  is 
not  acquired  after  the  age  of  twelve.  They  can  tell 
in  an  instant  whether  a  Freshman  has  been  reared 
in  an  atmosphere  of  good  books,  in  a  family  where 
the  excellent  old  custom  persists  of  reading  the  Bible 
aloud,  or  comes  from  a  house  where  father,  mother, 
and  children  alike  buy  only  the  yellow  journals  and 
cheap  magazines.  In  the  latter  case,  he  may  appear 
to  be  well-fed  and  well-clothed,  yet  the  first  word  he 


122  LITERATURE  FOR  ENGINEERS 

utters  will  betray  his  mental  starvation.  In  combat- 
ing this  sort  of  poverty  and  famine  we  can  do  some- 
thing for  our  own  generation,  but  we  naturally  have 
better  hopes  of  the  next.  We  can  warn  its  parents. 
When  a  child  asks  for  bread,  no  father  will  pur- 
posely give  him  a  stone. 

Hence,  fourthly.  Begin  now  to  accumulate  a  li- 
brary, for  fear  that  those  who  shall  some  day  be 
dependent  upon  you  may  starve.  It  is  not  important 
that  a  young  man  should  own  many  books  of  general 
literature;  it  is  imperative  that  he  should  own  good 
books,  and  use  them.  The  best  way  to  assure  your- 
self that  you  really  own  a  volume  is  to  underscore 
sentences,  and  pencil  the  margin.  For  the  sake  of 
definiteness,  I  shall  name  a  handful  of  books  that 
every  one  ought  to  possess  and  wear  out,  adding  a 
hint  or  two  about  serviceable  editions:  The  Iliad 
of  Homer,  translated  by  Lang,  Leaf,  and  Myers,  and 
published  by  the  Macmillan  Company. — The  Odys- 
sey of  Homer,  translated  by  Butcher  and  Lang,  is- 
sued by  the  same  publisher.  The  Odyssey  is  the 
best  story  of  adventure  ever  put  together. — The 
Divine  Comedy  of  Dante,  in  any  one  of  several 
translations ;  for  example,  in  that  of  Tozer,  published 
by  the  Oxford  University  Press. — The  Oxford  Shake- 
speare, in  one  volume,  published  by  the  Oxford  Uni- 
versity Press.  This  certainly  is  the  best  compendi- 
ous edition  to  recommend. — 'The  1911  Bible,'  pub- 
lished by  the  Oxford  University  Press,  *a  scholarly 
and  carefully-corrected  text  of  the  historic  English 
Bible,  the  time-honored  Authorized  Version.'     One 


USE  THE  PUBLIC  LIBEAEY  123 

reason  why  people  fail  to  see  that  the  Bible  is  the 
most  interesting  book  in  the  world  is  that  they  are 
afraid  of  it;  but  the  student  of  literature  must  not 
be  put  out  of  countenance  by  his  own  prejudices. 
Another  reason  is  that  it  is  usually  cut  up  into 
verses  in  such  fashion  that  the  sequence  of  thought 
is  injured.  'The  1911  Bible/  by  restoring  the  origi- 
nal paragraph  or  strophe,  ordinarily  enables  one  to 
understand  the  connection,  where  one  did  not  under- 
stand before.  Throw  away  all  preconceptions  and 
second-hand  opinions,  and  begin  with  the  story  of 
Job. — Last,  the  Oxford  Milton,  published  by  the 
Oxford  University  Press.  At  current  prices,^  these 
six  books  will  cost  in  all,  I  think,  about  seven  dol- 
lars. They  may  prove  a  safer  equipment  for  a  liberal 
education  than  the  multitude  of  authors  in  the  stacks 
of  a  university  library. 

Fifthly.  At  the  same  time,  one  need  not  be  afraid 
of  large  public  collections,  either.  There  is,  indeed, 
some  danger  that  the  multiplication  of  free  circulat- 
ing libraries  may  discourage  the  private  ownership 
of  books.  Yet  the  danger  will  hardly  frighten  a 
person  of  sense  from  the  door  of  knowledge,  and 
certainly  will  never  frighten  away  the  man  whose 
soul  has  been  purged  of  fear  by  steady  contact  with 
Homer    or    Milton.      Moreover,    without    access    to 

*  In  February,  1920,  The  Oxford  Press  lists  the  editions  of 
Sliakespeare,  Milton^  and  the  Bible  at  $1.25  each,  and  Tozer's 
Dante  at  $1.50.  The  Macmillan  Company  still  lists  the  two 
translations  of  Homer  at  $0.80;  the  abridged  translations,  which 
are  cheaper,  should  be  avoided.     [Prices  since  have  risen.] 


124  »  LITERATUEE  FOR  ENGINEERS 

larger  collections  than  the  average  individual  can 
afford,  one  could  scarcely  think  of  prosecuting  any 
study,  whether  literary  or  technical.  Accordingly, 
for  tHe  sake  of  thoroughly  Imowing  the  author  we 
have  taken  as  our  playmate,  let  us  utilize  some  near- 
by reading-room  in  a  good  library.  It  has  been 
whispered  that  at  several  institutions  one  or  two  of 
the  students  of  engineering  do  not  know  what  the 
inside  of  the  university  library  is  like. 

We  may  now  come  back  to  the  points  that  need  final 
attention.  G-ood  general  reading  enables  a  man  to 
work  more  freely  and  sanguinely  and  rapidly  in  his 
special  vocation.  This  is  not  fancy,  but  solid  fact. 
General  reading  is  an  act  of  recuperation.  Most  of  an 
engineer 's  mental  activity  is  in  the  nature  of  exercise. 
His  profession  wears  out  the  tissue  of  his  mind.  Good 
reading  nourishes  and  builds  up  that  tissue.  Profes- 
sional men  often  complain  that  they  have  little  or  no 
time  for  books.  The  better  men  seem  to  have  time. 
Some  have  time,  perhaps,  because  they  are  better  engi- 
neers and  the  like ;  but  more  probably  they  are  better 
professional  men  because  they  take  time  to  feed  their 
minds.  They  have  time  for  the  essential  things  of  life, 
because  their  brains,  being  well-fed,  have  tone,  and 
work  with  fearless  precision.  Time  is  elastic.  He  who 
as  a  man  takes  time  for  good  general  reading  will  find 
that  his  general  reading  gains  time  for  him  as  an  engi- 
neer or  a  lawyer  or  a  physician.  The  proof  of  this 
pudding  is  in  the  eating.  We  have  heard  about  the  old 
ideal  of  education :  *  a  sound  mind  in  a  sound  body. ' 
Eeconstructed  to  meet  the  conditions  of  the  present 


LITEEATUEE  AN  ANTIDOTE  TO  FEAE         125 

day,  this  ideal  should  be  stated  thus:  a  specifically 
trained  mind,  in  a  well-nourished  soul,  in  a  healthy 
frame.  Of  such  a  man  his  country  will  not  feel 
ashamed. 

Such  a  man  will  not  often  be  troubled  by  fear. 
From  the  Greeks  down,  the  greatesit  poets  and  critics 
have  been  almost  unanimous  in  recognizing  that  a 
primary  function  of  the  best  literature  is  to  release 
men  from  fear,  to  imbue  them  with  an  exalted  and 
reverent  courage.  Thus,  in  the  ideal  Republic  of  Plato, 
Socrates  would  admit  only  such  poetry  as  might  after 
a  positive  fashion  confirm  the  hearts  of  his  ideal  citi- 
zens, and  directly  contribute  to  the  development  in 
them  of  reverence.  Thus  the  real  Greeks  under  Xeno- 
phon  chanted  a  pgean  before  entering  into  battle.  And 
thus  the  Normans'  of  William  the  Conqueror  are  said 
to  have  moved  against  the  English  at  Hastings,  a  re- 
nowned minstrel  in  front  singing  their  national  epic, 
the  Song  of  Roland. 

In  peace,  fear  is  the  subtle  and  destructive  enemy  of 
all  original  thought  and  action,  of  that  personal  inde- 
pendence which  every  man  must  preserve  if  he  is  to  be 
deemed  free,  and  of  that  unqualified  devotion  to  his 
country  which  patriotism  at  all  times  demands.  Little 
as  men  realize  it,  the  atmosphere  they  live  in  is  sur- 
charged with  an  infectious  terror,  blighting  their  per- 
sonal happiness,  thwarting  their  services  to  the  com- 
monwealth. In  the  long  run,  the  most  potent  of  all 
incentives  and  deterrents  with  respect  to  individual 
action  is  the  fear  of  what  others  may  say  or  think. 
And  thus  men  live  so  continuously  in  a  state  of  anxiety, 


126  LITERATURE  FOR  ENGINEERS 

which  is  another  name  for  fear,  that  they  are  not  aware 
of  the  disease.  They  believe,  because  it  is  common, 
that  it  is  a  state  of  health.  Yet  it  is  both  chronic  and 
vulgar.  The  anxiety  to  be  like  other  people,  only  big- 
ger and  richer,  is,  like  nearly  all  the  forms  of  fear, 
unspeakably  vulgar ;  as  vulgar  now  as  when  Aristotle 
observed  that  epic  poetry  and  tragedy,  in  the  hands  of 
Homer  and  Sophocles,  gave  men  pleasure  by  relieving 
them  of  certain  disturbing  emotions,  one  of  which  was 
fear.  The  antidote  to  individual  and  communal  fear 
may  be  had  in  a  few  volumes. 

Here  are  fourteen  lines  from  one  of  them,  the  senti- 
ments of  a  man  eminently  fearless,  eminently  reverent, 
a  lofty  being,  endowed  with  every  power  of  enjoyment 
that  nature  could  bestow,  or  education  develop ;  who 
nevertheless  gave  the  vigor  of  his  manhood  to  rela- 
tively humble  and  most  laborious  service  of  his  State ; 
who  lost  his  eyesight  in  that  unremitting  labor ;  who, 
old,  impoverished,  blind,  lived  a  suspect  under  a  re- 
stored monarchy  which  he  hated  as  a  tyranny ;  who  yet 
retained  his  courage  unabated,  and  preserved  his  faith 
in  the  efficacy  of  human  endeavor.  In  simplicity,  in 
reverence,  in  the  power  of  inspiring  courage,  there  are, 
outside  his  own  works,  few  things  in  English,  or  in  any 
other  modern  language,  to  equal  Milton's  sonnet  On 
his  Blindness : 

When  I  consider  how  my  light  is  spent 

Ere  half  my  days,  in  this  dark  world  and  wide, 

And  that  one  talent  which  is  death  to  hide 

Lodged  with  me  useless,  though  my  soul  more  bent 

To  serve  therewith  my  Maker,  and  present 


POWER  AND   FEEEDOM  127 

My  true  account,  lest  He,  returning,  chide — 
'Doth  God  exact  day-labor,  light  denied?' 
I  fondly  ask.    But  Patience,  to  prevent 
That  murmur,  soon  replies :    '  God  doth  not  need 
Either  man's  work  or  His  own  gifts;  who  best 
Bear  His  mild  yoke,  they  serve  Him  best.    His  state 
Is  kingly:  thousands  at  His  bidding  speed 
And  post  o'er  land  and  ocean  without  rest; 
They  also  serve  who  only  stand  and  wait.' 

In  our  age  of  hurry  we  may  accept  this  final  senti- 
ment respecting  two  kinds  of  service  as  of  some  value, 
since  it  comes  from  one  who,  after  all,  far  exceeded  the 
petty  measure  of  our  accomplishment  to-day.  Indeed, 
this  poet,  scholar,  patriot,  is  the  man,  and  his  are  the 
civic  virtues,  that  Wordsworth  longed  for  in  times 
much  like  our  own,  with  a  longing  not  more  suitable  in 
England  than  in  America : 

Milton!  thou  shouldst  be  living  at  this  hour. 

England  hath  need  of  thee.     She  is  a  fen 

Of  stagnant  waters:  altar,  sword,  and  pen. 

Fireside,  the  heroic  wealth  of  hall  and  bower, 

Have  forfeited  their  ancient  English  dower 

Of  inward  happiness.     We  are  selfish  men: 

O!  raise  us  up,  return  to  us  again; 

And  give  us  manners,  virtue,  freedom,  power. 

Tliy  soul  was  like  a  star,  and  dwelt  apart; 

Thou  hadst  a  voice  whose  sound  was  like  the  sea. 

Pure  as  the  naked  heavens,  majestic,  free, 

So  didst  thou  travel  on  life's  common  way 

In  cheerful  godliness;  and  yet  thy  heart 

The  lowliest  duties  on  herself  did  lay. 


VIII 

TEACHER  AND  STUDENT' 

IF  I  could  now  eommand  the  use  of  a  few  stage- 
properties,  and  several  good,  solemn,  hypocritical 
actors,  it  would  be  not  only  diverting,  but  instructive, 
to  have  the  curtain  open,  as  it  were,  on  a  set  of  men, 
or  rather  reappearing  ghosts,  called  Sophists,  who 
should  entertain  us  with  cunning  debate,  in  the  antique 
style,  on  the  difference  between  a  teacher  and  a  student 
— if  there  be  a  difference.  There  should  be  a  sympa- 
thetic Chorus,  and  a  leader  of  it,  to  call  attention  to 
each  speaker  before  he  began  his  part,  and  to  stand 
aside  in  respectful  silence  during  the  speeches.  We 
might,  indeed,  find  the  characters  engaging,  less  be- 
cause they  were  ancient,  than  because  the  Greek  Soph- 
ists had  so  many  traits  that  are  distinctly  modem. 
But  a  dialogue  carried  on  by  Sophists  appearing  in  the 
flesh,  like  Ibsen's  Ghosts,  would  be  very  suggestive  if 
they  maintained,  in  sophistical  fashion,  that  the  teacher 
and  the  student  are  not  essentially  the  same  person. 
It  would  suggest  that  the  race  of  Sophists  is  not  all 
dead ;  that  it  comprises  a  large  class  of  ingenious  men 
*  Adapted  from  an  address  delivered  at  the  meeting  of  the 
New  Jersey  Association  of  Teachers  of  English,  held  at  Newark, 
March  16,  1918.  The  address  was  first  published  in  School  and 
Society  8.  91-97  (July  27,  1918),  and  is  reprinted  with  the  kind 
consent  of  the  editox. 

128 


CHAEACTEE  OF  THE  SOPHIST  129 

in  every  age,  including  many  who  seem  to  be  fore- 
most in  the  realm  of  thought  and  education ;  and  that 
America  at  this  very  hour  is  well  supplied  with  Soph- 
ists incarnate.  If  only  we  could  unmask  and  identify 
them ! 

But  to  carry  out  the  dramatic  fiction  would  not 
satisfy  the  ends  of  a  discussion  that  is  intended  to  be 
more  profitable  than  amusing.  Nor  may  we  now  pry 
into  the  whole  art  of  sophistry.  For  that,  the  curious 
reader  must  be  sent  to  Jowett's  translation  of  the 
Dialogues  of  Plato,  and  to  the  writings  of  Matthew 
Arnold  and  Dr.  Flexner.  And  yet  it  may  illuminate 
the  relation  betwixt  teacher  and  student  to  consider 
for  a  moment' the  ways  of  the  Sophist,  if  haply  we  may 
learn  of  him  and  be  wise.  What  are  his  character- 
istics ? 

The  Greefe  also  asked  this  question,  for  the  Sophist 
was  a  frequent  apparition  among  them ;  he  called  him- 
self a  teacher ;  and  he  appeared  so  suddenly  in  so  many 
different  places  that  they  found  it  necessary  to  identify 
and  label  him.  To  them^ — to  Plato,  for  example — ^a 
Sophist  was  one  who  professed  to  have  wisdom  in  gen- 
eral, and  to  be  able  to  make  other  men  wise,  though  he 
himself  had  no  thorough  knowledge  of  any  one  thing. 
For  a  substantial  consideration,  he  would  give  you 
general  culture  with  no  special  effort  on  his  side,  while 
you  yourself  were  not  under  the  painful  necessity  of 
learning  anything  in  particular.  He  discoursed,  or,  as 
we  should  say,  lectured;  and  you  merely  listened  in 
delight  to  what  he  asserted.  Yet  to  Plato  the  truly 
wise  man  was  Socrates,  who  began  operations  by  con- 


130         TEACHER  AND  STUDENT 

fessing  his  ignorance;  who  was  swift  to  inquire,  and 
reluctant  to  affirm ;  and  who,  when  he  taught,  taught 
only  the  habit  and  method  of  investigation.  To  Aris- 
totle, the  greatest  student  of  all  time,  a  Sophist  is  a 
man  who  makes  money  by  sham  wisdom.  Now  every 
one,  of  course,  obtains  a  living  somehow ;  so  that  mak- 
ing money,  or  even  the  gaining  of  a  reputation,  cannot 
be  the  mark  either  of  sham  wisdom  or  of  true.  The 
primary  trait  of  a  Sophist,  then,  is  his  unwillingness 
to  admit  his  own  ignorance.  He  simply  lacks  the  cour- 
age to  say  '  I  dO'  not  know. '  He  begins  with  a  flat  asser- 
tion, rather  than  a  question  or  hypothesis;  he  has 
investigated  no  one  subject  from  the  bottom  up,  but 
deals  in  sounding  generalities ;  and,  through  a  show  of 
wisdom,  he  deceives  himself  and  imposes  on  the  crowd, 
so  that  they  pay  him  money  and  spread  abroad  his 
renown.  As  he  is  afraid  to  say  '  I  do  not  know, '  so  is 
he  unaware  that  silence  is  golden.  He  thinks  that  he 
will  be  heard  for  his  much  speaking.  He  therefore 
imagines  that  the  aim  of  a  liberal  education  is  facility 
in  self-expression.  He  develops  a  knack  of  rhetoric, 
yet  never  becomes  a  true  orator,  for  what  he  says  may 
stimulate  attention,  but  cannot  dominate  the  memory. 
He  is  fond  of  verbal  quibbling,  and  tends  to  repeat  his 
catchwords,  and  to  force  them  out  of  their  normal 
meanings;  though  in  general  he  utters  stereotyped 
phrases  like  'in  that  direction'  and  'along  those  lines' ; 
and,  not  being  possessed  of  the  low  cunning  necessary 
to  success  in  mathematics,  will  say  that  something  or 
other  'centres  around'  a  point.  Again,  having  mere 
scraps  of  classical  lore,  and  an  abysmal  ignorance  of 


CHARACTER  OF  THE  SOPHIST  131 

the  culture  in  the  Middle  Ages,  he  will  use  the  words 
'old'  and  ' mediaeval '  as  terms  of  censure,  and  'modern' 
as  a  term  of  unqualified  praise.  But  his  favorite  word 
of  commendation  is  'broad';  and  his  ideal  man  is 
'broad-minded,'  whatever  that  may  mean — it  seems  to 
designate  a  person  with  a  mind  like  a  loose,  ill-fitting 
shoe.  He  does  not  think  that  'broad'  is  the  way  that 
leadeth  to  destruetion.  (  Accordingly,  his  stock-in-trade 
of  words  and  notions  is  partly  eccentric  and  mostly 
tame.  When  the  audience  madly  applauds,  he  does 
not  (like  the  ancient  orator)  remark  in  an  aside  to  his 
friend,  'I  must  have  said  something  foolish.'  He  is, 
in  fact,  more  eager  for  applause  than  for  pelf — though 
he  likes  pelf,  too.  He  is  so  intent  upon  winning  both 
that  he  has  no  time  for  study.  Yet  he  talks  of  over- 
work, or  at  all  events  of  the  multitude  of  his  cares.  In 
his  search  for  novelty  of  thought,  he  has  acquired  the 
habit  of  making  the  worse  appear  the  better  reason ;  he 
tells  you  that  power  gained  by  studying  a  subject  that 
is  hard,  like  Greek  or  mathematics,  cannot  be  trans- 
ferred to  the  acquisition  of  a  subject  that  is  easy. 
He  is  far  less  apt  to  quote  from  Ba,con's  essay  Of 
Studies  than  from  Mr.  Dooley  on  Democracy  and 
Education.  In  studies,  he  advocates  the  line  of  least 
resistance,  which  is  the  line  of  free  choice  from  the 
kindergarten  to  the  grave.  He  maintains  that  'cul- 
ture' is  to  be  had  from  every  subject,  and  implies 
that  it  may  be  obtained  as  well  from  manual  train- 
ing or  blaeksmithing  as  from  mathematics  or  Greek 
— or  English.  At  all  events,  he  will  say  these  things 
so  long  as  the  crowd  repeats  them.    When  their  no- 


132  TEACHER  AND  STUDENT 

tions  are  altered,  his  utterances  change  also.  Fi- 
nally, the  Sophist  cannot  distinguish  a  man  of  real 
learning,  save  by  a  vague  feeling  of  discomfort  or 
apprehension  when  they  meet,  and  a  sense  of  being 
on  his  guard.  He  exhibits  a  kind  of  rage  at  phil- 
osophical ideas,  if  any  one  attempts  to  apply  them 
to  the  practice  of  teaching. 

It  now  appears  that,  while  talking  of  the  Sophist, 
we  have  been  thinking  of  the  sort  of  teacher  who  is 
not  primarily  a  student.  And  shall  I  confess  that, 
out  of  an  endless  line  of  shadowy  forms,  seen  darkly 
in  a  magic  glass,  and  extending  from  remote  anti- 
quity down  to  this  month  and  minute,  I  have  been 
watching  the  mien  and  gestures,  grave  or  gay,  of 
three  notable  Sophists  whom  the  world  has  called 
educational  leaders?  And  that,  in  reporting  my 
vision,  I  have  combined  the  most  salient  traits  of 
these  three  great  ones  into  a  single  composite  por- 
trait? Their  names  are  Protagoras,  Evenus,  and 
Prodicus;  and  the  men  are  neither  wholly  dead  nor 
wholly  alive,  but  sometimes  they  seem  to  be  phan- 
toms, and  sometimes  flesh  and  blood ;  though  actually 
Protagoras  has  an  existence  in  the  real  world,  while 
Prodicus  and  Evenus  are  now  in  the  abode  of 
shadows.^ 

^  It  may  be  proper  to  explain  that  each  of  the  three  charaoter- 
sketches  is  likewise  a  composite  picture.  If  one  of  them  sug- 
gests a  historical  personage  whom  I  have  elsewhere  quoted  with 
respect,  it  should  be  remembered  that  some  freedom  is  granted 
to  the  method  of  satire,  which  must  aim  to  represent,  not  indi- 
viduals, but  general  types,  yet  cannot  create  them  out  of  noth- 
ing. 


SOPHISTS  GRAVE  AND  GAY  133 

The  writings  of  Protagoras  are  familiar  to  all 
teachers  of  English,  for  the  man  himself  once  ap- 
peared in  our  midst,  at  the  age  of  sixty-one,  and 
began  to  make  us  wise  by  the  direct  method ;  nor  did 
he  fail  to  attain  the  end  for  which  he  came,  though 
in  St.  Louis  not  more  than  three  hundred  and  fifty 
Philistines  would  pay  and  hear  him  at  one  time. 
But  a  teacher  of  English  in  the  Middle  West  has 
recently  published  a  book  entitled  Protagoras— How 
to  Know  Him;  so  that  there  is  little  excuse  for  us 
if  we  fail  to  recognize  the  greatest  of  modern  Eng- 
lish Sophists,  who  wrote  on  culture  and  anarchy  and 
Homer  and  Celtic  literature  and  many  other  sub- 
jects. At  times  a  poet,  at  times  almost  a  philosopher, 
a  lucid  and  often  elevating  writer,  he  nevertheless 
was  a  teacher  rather  than  a  student,  a  fact  which 
kept  him  from  being  the  best  kind  of  teacher.  And 
by  the  following  anecdote  one  may  certainly  know 
him;  it  is  related  by  Goldwin  Smith,  who  says: 

'  [Protagoras]  was  outwardly  a  singular  contrast 
to  his  almost  terribly  earnest  sire.  Not  that  he  was 
by  any  means  without  serious  purpose,  especially  in 
his  province  of  education.  His  outward  levity  was 
perhaps  partly  a  mask,  possibly  in  some  measure  a 
recoil  from  his  father's  sternness.  As  we  were  travel- 
ing together  in  a  railway  carriage,  I  observed  a  pile 
of  books  at  his  side.  ''These,"  said  he,  with  a  gay 
air,  "are  Celtic  books  which  they  send  me.  Be- 
cause I  have  written  on  Celtic  literature,  they  fancy 
I  must  know  something  of  the  language."  ' 

'His  ideas,'  adds  Goldwin  Smith,  'had  been  formed 
by  a  few  weeks  at  a  Welsh  watering-place. '  ^ 

*  Beminiscences,  p.  71. 
10 


134         TEACHEE  AND  STUDENT 

Prodicus,  a  venerable  figure  in  whose  career  there 
always  was  a  certain  distinction,  in  bygone  years 
was  the  leading  spirit  in  a  famous  Oriental  univer- 
sity. Like  Protagoras,  he  wrote  and  spoke  with  abil- 
ity upon  things  in  general,  including  religion  and 
education,  without  a  knowledge  of  the  details  in  any 
one  field  of  scholarship,  however  small.  We  might 
fancy  him  to  have  been  well-versed,  if  not  in  He- 
brew, yet  in  New-Testament  G-reek;  but  his  ideas  of 
religion  were  not  formed  by  severe  study.  Similarly, 
without  being  an  accomplished  Latinist,  and  without 
an  extensive  acquaintance  with  the  teaching  of  Lat- 
in, he  courageously  divulged  his  sentiments  on  the 
value  of  linguistic  discipline,  to  the  confusion  of  the 
more  or  less  experienced.  For  good  or  ill,  no  other 
man  in  his  generation  seemed  to  wield  more  power 
over  Occidental  education  than  Prodicus,  partly 
through  a  lack  of  restraint  in  his  followers,  who,  with 
the  great  body  of  American  Sophists,  metamor- 
phosed our  colleges  and  similar  institutions.  Fi- 
nally, their  educational  system,  if  it  could  be  called 
a  system,  descending  upon  the  secondary  schools, 
disintegrated  these  as  well.  Yet,  for  all  his  persua- 
siveness and  acumen,  and  for  all  his  native  dignity 
and  common  sense,  it  may  be  said  of  Prodicus,  as 
Socrates  said  of  himself,  and  as  the  rest  of  us  may 
say  of  ourselves,  that  he  knew  nothing;  with  this 
difference,  that  Socrates  openly  confessed  it,  and 
acted  in  harmony  with  the  confession.  And  hence 
the  time  will  come  when  men  will  ask :  Did  Prodicus 
work  greater  good,  or  greater  harm,  to   American 


SOPHISTS  GRAVE  AND  GAY  135 

education  than  any  other  man  in  history?  But 
even  now  it  is  not  impossible  to  understand  him,  if 
we  begin  the  process  in  Socratic  fashion.  What  did 
Prodicus  teach  or  study  in  particular  before  he  as- 
sumed the  role  of  making  men  wise  in  general?  Of 
the  thousands  to  whom  his  name  and  fame  are  famil- 
iar, virtually  no  one  can  reply.  But  the  answer 
is  that,  before  he  began  to  fix  the  place  of  humane 
letters  in  the  curriculum,  Prodicus  taught  a  certain 
branch  of  physical  science.  Did  he  love  his  subject 
with  the  quenchless  love  that  qualifies  a  man  to  be 
a  leader  of  education?  It  is  boasted  by  friends  of 
Prodicus  that  after  he  ceased,  in  his  early  prime,  to 
instruct  in  his  chosen  field,  he  never  again,  through- 
out an  ample  lifetime,  so  much  as  looked  at  a  book 
on  that  subject.  Instead,  he  is  said  to  have  assisted 
artless  publishing-houses,  to  his  and  their  mutual 
advantage,  in  measuring  the  wisdom  of  the  past  in 
terms  of  flea-skips,  making  dubious  estimates  of  books 
in  general  according  to  their  length,  at  a  time  when 
he  might  well  have  hesitated  about  acting  as  a  crit- 
ic of  monographs  in  his  own  particular  field.  To 
tell  the  truth,  Prodicus,  though  amply  and  variously 
endowed  by  nature,  was  not  born  with  literary 
genius;  nor  did  he  become  in  fact  a  well-read  man. 
No  doubt  the  canny  publishers  were  able  to  trade 
upon  his  reputation,  and  he  was  honestly  deceived 
to  his  own  profit ;  for  some  men  are  bom  Sophists, 
some  achieve  sophistry,  and  some  have  sophistry 
thrust  upon  them, 

Evenus  is  no  mere  college  president.     Indeed,  no 
magic  mirror  will   disclose  whether  he  is  a  single 


136         TEACHER  AXD  STUDENT 

wise  man,  or  many  gathered  into  one.  He  is  evanes- 
cent and  ubiquitous.  His  speech  may  be  heard  at 
any  time,  in  any  place,  on  any  subject  or  none;  for 
his  voice  is  an  echo  of  all  voices.  Though  he  is 
always  in  all  eyes  and  in  his  own,  no  man  hath  seen 
Evenus;  nor  hath  Evenus  often  seen  himself.  He 
is  a  living  mask  and  an  embodied  shadow,  who  be- 
comes aware  of  himself  only  in  the  presence  of  a 
student  who  studies,  and  then  only  through  an  inde- 
terminate sense  of  pain;  for  he  wishes  to  be  looked 
at,  but  not  to  be  discovered.  Must  we  find  him  a 
local  habitation,  as  well  as  a  name?  If  so,  he  is  a 
kind  of  sultan  in  Mecca,  the  surintendent  of  a  col- 
legiate institute  so  great  in  point  of  numbers  that 
it  long  since  outstripped  the  University  of  Cairo, 
while  the  University  of  Valparaiso  has  lost  hope  of 
vying  with  it.  As  an  Oriental  potentate  he  has  the 
Midas-touch,  and  a  feeling  for  all  generalities  that 
tickle  the  masses.  Gold  and  pupils  rush  in  upon 
Evenus  in  an  endless  stream,  while  the  poet  and 
musician  flee  away.  The  crowd  listens  to  him 
breathlessly,  and  does  not  remember  what  he  says: 

The  hungry  sheep  look  up,  and  are  not  fed. 

He  seems  always  to  be  uttering  general  truths,  and  to 
speak  upon  many  themes,  above  all  upon  education. 
But  he,  too,  knows  nothing  in  particular.  There  is 
no  subject,  nor  any  part  of  one,  in  which  he  is  an 
acknowledged  master;  and  herein  he  differs  from  the 
head  of  the  College  de  France,  in  Paris,  which  is  at 
the  summit  of  French  education;  for  the  head  of 


A  EEAL  AUTHORITY  137 

the  College  de  France  is  an  acknowledged  master  of 
Greek.  The  magic  glass  will  not  reveal  the  func- 
tion of  Evenus  as  an  educator;  but  many  years  ago 
a  teacher  of  English  in  an  Eastern  school  helped  me 
to  understand  it.     This  teacher  said: 

'Evenus  is  the  most  wonderful  man  I  ever  met. 
You  cannot  ask  a  question  of  any  sort,  on  any  sub- 
ject, to  which  Evenus  will  not  give  you  an  immediate 
and  final  answer.' 

I  straightway  begged  for  a  sample  of  Evenus' 
wisdom;  but  for  some  reason  my  informant  could 
not  repeat  a  single  one  of  his  replies.  "Whereupon 
I  said  to  this  teacher  of  English: 

*In  sheer  intellect,  the  ablest  man  I  ever  met  is 
Professor  So-and-so,  of  such  and  such  a  Continental 
university.  He  is  a  leading  European  authority  in 
a  field  to  which,  as  it  happens,  I  have  devoted  some 
years  of  study.  If  you  go  to  Professor  So-and-so, 
and  ask  him  a  question,  he  is  likely  to  reply,  *'I  do 
not  know,  "or  *  *  We  do  not  know ' ' ;  for  he  is  abreast 
of  his  times,  and  in  his  case  the  two  statements  are 
identical.  He  is  then  likely  to  continue,  counting 
off  his  points  of  ignorance  on  his  thumb  and  fingers : 
"I  [or  *'We"]  do  not  know  this  first  thing;  and  we 
do  not  know  this  second ;  nor  do  we  know  this  third, 
nor  yet  this  fourth.  But  here,"  touching  his  little 
finger,  **is  a  small  but  important  thing  which 
scholars  have  discovered.    Let  us  begin  with  that."  ' 

Professor  So-and-so  has  spent  far  more  of  his  life 
in  studying  than  in  talking;  he  has  had  a  hand  in 
training  the  greatest  teachers  of  English  in  America, 
not  to  speak  of  other  nations;  and  he  is  still  one  of 
the  great  teachers  of  his  day. 


138         TEACHEE  AND  STUDENT 

Our  topic,  however,  is  not  sophistry,  but  its  anti- 
dote. By  teacher  and  student  we  mean  one  person, 
the  teacher  as  a  student. 

The  antidote  for  sophistry  is  intensive  study;  not 
general  reading,  however  indispensable  that  may  be, 
but  special  investigation.  For  the  teacher  of  Eng- 
lish, actual  or  prospective,  it  is  graduate  study  under 
scholarly  supervision — under  the  direction  of  some 
one  of  the  few  highly  productive  scholars  in  our 
American  universities;  or  else  abroad;  or,  prefer- 
ably, first  in  America,  and  then  in  Europe.  It  is 
the  study,  not  of  things  in  general,  but  of  one  thing 
at  a  time,  and  of  some  one  substantial  subject  for 
at  least  three  years.  A  few  weeks  at  a  Welsh  water- 
ing-place, a  few  weeks  at  a  summer  school,  are  not 
enough.  Intensive  study,  coupled  with  extensive, 
and  with  a  real  philosophy  of  scholarship,  is  the  sole 
means  of  regenerating  English  in  America,  where 
the  subject  has  for  the  most  part  fallen  into  a  so- 
phistical art  of  rhetoric.  And  a  sophistical  art  it 
will  remain  so  long  as  the  emphasis  is  laid  upon  ex- 
pression, and  not  upon  the  truth  and  value  of  what 
is  to  be  uttered;  nay,  until  the  pupils  are  taught  to 
be  silent  until  it  is  clear  they  have  something  to  say. 
The  'daily  theme'  gives  training  in  sophistry. 

In  the  long  run,  though,  a  man  must  be  his  own 
teacher,  and  must  study  for  himself.  He  must  seek 
out  a  topic  not  too  great  for  his  powers,  yet  one  that 
will  stretch  them,  and  follow  it  consistently  until 
he  transcends  himself  through  learning;  for,  while 
there   is    a   distinction  between    pupil    and   master, 


APPARENT  AND  REAL  STUDY       139 

there  is  no  essential  difference  between  teacher  and 
student.  First-hand  knowledge,  completely  possessed, 
gives  one  a  base-line  and  a  touchstone  for  esti- 
mating the  extent  and  reality  of  the  knowledge  or 
pretensions  of  one's  fellow-teachers  and  one's  pupils. 
It  enables  us  to  distinguish  between  true  generaliza- 
tion and  empty  platitude,  between  the  grasp  of  wis- 
dom and  the  show.  But  the  process  of  learning 
never  ceases.  The  man  who  takes  up  the  profession 
of  teacher  for  life  has  taken  up  the  profession  of 
student  for  life.  If  not,  he  will  suffer  shipwreck. 
He  may  not  lose  his  position  in  the  world;  Sophists 
do  not  lose  their  stipends  and  emoluments.  But  he 
will  lose  his  self-respect,  and  his  power  in  his  work. 
Can  a  teacher  who  has  ceased  to  study  continue  to 
sympathize  with  his  pupils  who  are  studying?  Can 
he  help  them  in  the  most  critical  point  of  instruc- 
tion, namely,  in  the  art  and  method  of  study? 

Our  pupils  in  the  university  who  listen  to  lectures 
all  day  long  do  not  know  how  to  study,  nor  did  they 
know  how  when  they  came  to  us  as  Freshmen.  Why 
is  that?  The  reasons,  which  are  many,  might  be 
summed  up  in  various  ways.  It  has  been  hinted  that 
American  education  has  for  years  been  in  the  hands 
of  the  Sophists,  and  is  at  their  mercy.  And  we  may 
add  that  America  for  years  has  desired,  not  culture, 
but  the  appearance  of  it.  The  collegian  is  satisfied 
with  a  pass-mark  of  60,  and  his  elders  are  content 
if  this  brings  him  the  degree  of  B.A.  But,  more 
definitely,  the  reason  why  the  pupils  cannot  study 
seems  to  be  this.    Preparatory  teachers  are  so  beset 


140         TEACHER  AND  STUDENT 

with  large  classes  and  liea\^  schedules  that  they  feel 
they  have  neither  time  nor  energy  for  systematic 
private  reading ;  and,  if  they  have  lost  the  habit  of 
study,  they  cannot  give  it  to  their  charges.  Yet  in 
all  likelihood  the  general  conditions  as  to  hours  and 
classes  will  not  greatly  improve  within  our  lifetime; 
and  hence  the  difficulty  cannot  be  met  by  complain- 
ing. "We  must  somehow  study  on  in  spite  of  all,  en- 
couraged by  the  thought  that  teachers  who  do  man- 
age to  study,  who  begin  by  utilizing  spare  moments 
and  half-holidays,  in  the  end  find  more  and  more 
time  for  it. 

For  their  sake,  let  us  outline  a  few  courses  that  a 
teacher  of  English  may  give  to  himself  as  a  vital 
elixir — as  a  relief  and  antidote  for  the  difficulties 
and  educational  sophistries  amidst  which  we  stu- 
dents must  live  and  breathe.  Having  alluded  to  the 
Platonic  Sophists,  we  may  turn  to  the  Platonic  no- 
tion of  a  symposium.  And  indeed  it  is  seemly  to 
begin  any  kind  of  educational  banquet  with  Plato. 
Accordingly,  by  way  of  grace  before  meat,  one  may 
counsel  every  teacher,  as  Horace  bids  the  poet:  Go 
mark  the  world;  and,  Study  the  page  Socratic.^ 
That  is,  let  us  observe  our  fellow-men,  whom  we  must 
understand  in  order  to  teach  them;  and  for  educa- 
tional ideas,  let  us  go  not  to  Matthew  Arnold,  or  to 
Dr.  Flexner,  or  to  any  one  else,  so  much  as  to  Plato 
— since  it  is  to  Plato  that  many  a  suggestive  writer 
of  the  day  owes  the  better  part  of  his  inspiration. 

^Ars  Poetica  310,  317. 


COURSES  FOR  TEACHERS  OF  ENGLISH         141 

In  the  banquet,  first  of  all  comes  the  course  in 
some  favorite  author — a  great  poet,  let  us  hope ;  say 
Milton  or  "Wordsworth,  or,  if  he  be  a  prose  poet,  then 
some  master  of  eloquence  like  Bacon  or  Ruskin. 
Choose  him  with  care,  as  one  would  a  husband  or  a 
wife.  If  he  be  a  first-rate  poet  in  the  stricter  sense, 
read  every  word  he  ever  published,  and  at  the  same 
time  narrowly  examine  some  one  of  his  poems,  as  it 
were  with  a  microscope.  Ask  yourself  a  thousand 
questions  about  it;  delay  the  process  of  answering, 
and  collect  evidence  that  may  settle  them.  Enter 
into  your  poet's  life,  and  make  his  friends  your 
friends.  Read  what  he  read,  for  thus  you  will  give 
yourself  the  education  of  a  poet — no  bad  thing  for 
a  teacher  of  literature.  Translate  portions  of  him 
into  the  foreign  language  you  know  best.  After  an 
interval,  translate  these  selections  back  into  Eng- 
lish, and  compare.  Roger  Ascham  taught  Queen 
Elizabeth  after  some  such  fashion ;  Franklin  acquired 
an  enviable  style  in  a  similar  way;  and  Sir  Philip 
Sidney  learned  to  write  English  by  the  same  means.^ 
Study  your  poet,  then,  with  dictionaries ;  and  if  some 
one  has  made  a  concordance  of  his  poems,  study  that. 
Perhaps  you  never  have  read  steadily  in  the  great 
Oxford  Dictionary  of  English,  or  in  Bradshaw's 
Concordance  to  Milton;  one  cannot  conceive  how 
fascinating  the  game  is  save  by  trying  it.  "Work 
into  your  author  deeply,  and  work  out  again  in  all 
directions,  until  you  live  his  life  as  he  lived  it  in  his 

*  See  Ascham,  The  Schoolmaster,  Book  2,  near  the  beginning 
(Works,  ed.  by  Giles,  4.  180) ;  and  compare  above,  pp.  99-101. 


142         TEACHER  AND  STUDENT 

age.  To  relive  the  life  of  a  Wordsworth,  or  a  Mil- 
ton is  a  prophylactic  against  sophistry.  It  is  the 
sort  of  thing  the  Sophist  never  does. 

Secondly,  there  is  the  course  in  the  principles  of 
literature.  For  these,  go  to  the  masters  and  pro- 
ducers, and  not  to  the  middlemen.  Go  to  Plato, 
Aristotle,  Horace,  and  Longinus  for  a  knowledge  of 
the  art  of  poetry,  and  an  understanding  of  the  es- 
sentials of  a  noble  and  impressive  style.  Read  these 
authors  themselves;  do  not  first  read  what  lesser 
men  have  said  about  them.  And  read  what  the  poets 
and  orators  have  said  about  their  own  art.  Read 
Shelley's  Defense  of  Poetry,  and  Wordsworth  on 
poetic  diction;  Cicero  and  Quintilian  on  the  educa- 
tion of  an  orator,  and  Burke's  essay  On  the  Sublime 
and  Beautiful. 

This  second  course  will  immediately  lead  to  a  study 
of  the  main  types  of  literature :  the  epic,  the  drama, 
the  novel,  lyrical  poetry  and  pastoral,  the  sonnet, 
the  character-sketch.  Such  are  the  forms  in  which 
the  human  mind  normally  expresses  itself.  Even 
the  character  of  the  Sophist  must  be  sketched  ac- 
cording to  standards  set  for  this  kind  of  writing  by 
Theophrastus.  Follow  the  development  of  the  novel 
from  the  Odyssey  to  the  Greek  romances,  and  from 
these  through  the  Italians  and  the  contemporaries 
of  Shakespeare  to  the  eighteenth  century,  to  Goethe's 
Wilhelm  Meister  and  the  works  of  Richardson  and 
Fielding,  and  so  to  Thackeray  and  George  Eliot. 
Or,  beginning  with  George  Eliot  and  her  Theophras- 
tus Such,  or  with  the  character-sketches   of   John 


A  COUKSE  IN  LITERAEY  TYPES  143 

Galsworthy,^  trace  this  type  of  composition  back 
through  the  Tatler  and  Spectator  and  the  Serious 
Call  of  William  Law  to  La  Bruyere,  and  from  Hall, 
Overbury,  and  Earle,  and  the  comedy  of  Ben  Jon- 
son,  back  through  the  mediaeval  rhetoricians,  and  so 
through  Rome  to  Greece — to  Theophrastus  and  the 
Rhetoric  of  Aristotle. 

The  investigation  of  literary  types  wiU  inevitably 
take  one  away  from  the  English,  which  is  a  deriva- 
tive literature,  to  those  Mediterranean  literatures 
from  which  the  English  poets  and  orators  have  drawn 
their  models,  and,  in  very  truth,  their  vital  force. 
The  epics  of  Milton  carry  us  back  to  Dante,  to  Virgil, 
to  Homer;  his  tragedy  to  -<3^].schylus ;  his  Lycidas  to 
the  Italian  pastoral  poets,  and  thence  to  the  Eclogues 
of  Virgil  and  the  Idyls  of  Theocritus ;  just  as  Tenny- 
son, "Wordsworth,  and  Burns,  since  they  all  studied 
Theocritus,  suggest  that  we  should  do  the  same. 
And  the  study  of  any  English  poet  leads,  not  only 
to  classical  sources,  but  also  to  the  corresponding 
types  in  the  Bible.  It  will  also  lead  to  the  study  of 
other  modern  literatures;  since  we  cannot  under- 
stand ourselves  unless  we  know  our  neighbors, 
whether  they  be  friends  or  enemies.  However,  it 
may  be  said  that  all  the  European  literatures  have 
been  friendly  with  one  another;  they  are  all  of  one 
family. 

But  doubtless  our  nearest  neighbors  in  matters  of 
the  intellect  have  been  the  Greeks  and  Romans,  since 
every  English  poet  of  the  first  rank  read  the  Latin 

^  In  -4  Commentary,  1911. 


144  TEACHER  AND  STUDENT 

poets,  and  every  Roman  poet  read  those  of  Greece. 
Accordingly,  next  in  importance  to  cultivating  some 
great  English  poet  as  a  familiar  friend,  we  may  rate 
the  last  course  now  to  be  mentioned,  a  course  in 
Greek  and  Latin  literature.  In  the  classical  writers, 
even  when  approached  through  translations,  we  have 
not  simply  an  antidote  for  sophistry,  nor  merely  a 
single  course  in  a  banquet,  but  a  complete  and 
wholesome  feast — one  that  for  a  year  will  provide 
a  hungry  man  or  woman  with  daily  bread,  the  spirit- 
ual food  we  pray  for.^ 

1  This    course    is    described    in    an.    Appendix,    below,    pp. 
294-307. 


IX 

PATTERNS ' 

WHEN  the  vernal  equinox  is  with  us,  and  the 
season  of  vernal  enchantment  advancing, 
with  one  wave  of  a  Neoplatonic  wand  I  transport 
all  lovers  of  wisdom,  in  an  instant,  as  it  were  to  the 
banks  of  Ilissus — to  the  terrestrial  paradise  of  Bar- 
tram's  Garden  on  the  west  bank  of  the  Schuylkill.^ 
And  behold! — the  spirit  of  the  younger  Bartram, 
*Puc-Puggy, '  as  the  Indians  called  him,  the  guile- 
less Flower-hunter  who  once  dwelt  here,  and  who 
never  grew  old,  though  the  days  of  his  years  were 
four  score  years  and  four.  Behold  him  in  the  spring- 
time, studying  the  patterns  in  flower  and  shrub,  in 
fern  and  laurel,  in  the  motion  of  insect,  and  in  the 
mind  of  man;  he  an  accomplished  botanist,  with  a 
childlike  sense  of  wonder.  And  what  is  he  observ- 
ing now?  Hung  between  the  fern  and  the  laurel, 
there  stretches  an  airy  silken  fabric,  almost  in  the 
vertical  plane,  in  shape  an  orb,  still  dew-bespangled, 

*  Adapted  from  an  address  delivered  before  the  Society  of  Phi 
Beta  Kappa  in  the  University  of  Pennsylvania,  March  21,  1919. 
The  address  was  printed  in  School  and  Society  9.  643-650  (May 
31,  1919),  from  which  it  is  reprinted  with  the  kind  consent  of 
the  editor. 

'For  the  Bartrams,  father  and  son,  see  my  chapter  on  Travel- 
lers and  Observers  in  The  Cambridge  History  of  American  Lit- 
erature 1. 185  ff,,  esp.  194-8. 

145 


146  PATTERNS 

and  gleaming  in  the  early  sunlight.  From  the 
centre  of  the  orb  run  delicate  yet  powerful  radii  to 
the  circumference,  and,  as  these  rays  diverge,  they 
are  crossed  at  narrow  intervals  by  slender  filaments 
that  make  a  succession  of  concentric  polygons  within 
the  confines  of  the  whole ;  so  that  the  whole  becomes 
a  cosmic  network  of  correspondences  and  sympa- 
thetic communications.  At  the  centre  rests  the  subtle 
being  that  spun  the  cosmic  pattern,  like  the  soul  in  a 
well-ordered  brain,  constantly  in  touch  with  its  sources 
of  information.  Perhaps  no  other  form  or  pattern 
in  external  nature  is  so  accessible  to  our  sense  of 
beauty,  and  to  that  grasp  of  order  which  is  the  es- 
sence of  knowledge,  as  this  web  of  the  orb-weaving 
garden  spider.  The  specimen  needs  no  preparation. 
No  microscope  or  telescope,  no  scalpel,  no  elaborate 
procedure,  is  required  for  a  first  inspection.  The 
object  is  of  intermediate  size,  as  easily  contemplated 
as  the  order  of  our  thoughts  about  it,  and  more 
familiar  to  us  Americans  than  the  patterns  in  the 
starry  sky.  Indeed,  it  may  be  used  as  a  type  or 
semblance  of  the  human  mind,  or  of  organized  sci- 
ence, for,  like  the  structure  of  the  soul,  or  of  the 
cosmos,  it  represents  an  idea,  or  form,  or  figure,  in 
the  mind  of  the  Divine  Creator. 

If  the  mention  of  Ilissus  and  the  beautiful  forms 
of  nature  and  intellect  has  not  already  suggested 
the  Socratic  dialogues,  the  image  of  a  child,  or  at 
all  events  of  an  unspoiled  mind,  fascinated  by  a 
pattern  will  surely  recall  the  Platonic  doctrine  of 
forms  or  ideas,  as  the  cobweb  should  recall  the 
masterly  plan  of  the  Phmdrus. 


RHETORIC  AND  MENTAL  PATTERNS    147 

In  that  dialogue  we  find  that  rhetoric,  the  servant 
of  education,  is  described  as  the  art  of  enchanting 
the  soul;  for  love  is  a  kind  of  enchantment,  and 
good  rhetoric  is  the  art  of  the  good  and  successful 
lover.  As  such,  it  is  indispensable  to  the  teacher, 
for  he  may  be  defined  as'  the  lover  of  humanity;  to 
the  lover  of  wisdom ;  to  the  lover  of  that  truth  which 
is  beauty,  and  that  beauty  which  is  truth — as  both 
Plato  and  Keats  aver.  It  is  the  art  which  he  must 
strive  to  acquire  who  would  introduce  form  and 
order  into  the  minds  of  men. 

No  doubt  this  talk  of  woven  orbs  and  patterns, 
and  woven  words  and  arguments,  of  an  art  of  rhetoric 
which  is  also  an  art  of  love,  and  an  art  of  love  which 
is  nothing  but  the  prosaic  art  of  teaching,  will  not 
in  all  respects  commend  itself  to  some  of  those  who 
instruct  the  young  in  English  composition,  and  who 
unwittingly  still  perpetuate  the  methods  our  fathers 
derived  from  the  arid  Scotch  rhetoricians.  In  time, 
perhaps,  we  shall  repudiate  most  of  this  heritage 
from  the  Scotch,  and  go  back  to  the  Greeks  (whom 
the  Scotch  now  and  then  consulted),  seeing  that 
they  not  only  produced  the  best  models  of  eloquence, 
but  also  understood  how  and  why  they  did  so.  Now 
the  ancient  theory  of  rhetoric  differed  from  one  that 
calls  itself  modem,  in  a  very  important  respect.  It 
began,  of  course — as  the  modem  one,  let  us  hope, 
does  also — by  insisting  that  the  speaker  should  know 
the  truth  about  the  subject  he  has  under  discussion, 
and,  what  is  more,  that  he  should  tell  the  truth  about 
it;   he  must  know   something  at   first  hand   before 


148  PATTEENS 

offering  to  speak  at  all,  and  he  must  be  fair  and  hon- 
est in  presenting  what  he  knows.  But,  this  assump- 
tion made,  the  ancient  theory  went  upon  the  princi- 
ple that  in  order  to  fascinate,  teach,  and  persuade, 
you  need  something  more.  In  addition,  or,  indeed, 
first  of  all,  you  must  thoroughly  understand  the  soul 
of  the  man  to  whom  your  speech  is  addressed.  You 
could  not  draw  the  mind  of  an  undergraduate  from 
the  athletic-field  to  Bartram's  Garden  with  a  cob- 
web, or  from  there  to  the  outskirts  of  Athens  with 
a  hawser  and  a  yoke  of  oxen,  if  you  were  not  fully 
acquainted  with  that  mind;  or,  if  you  succeeded 
without  this  knowledge,  you  would  succeed  by  chance 
— perhaps  with  a  chain  and  elephants  when  you 
needed  but  the  silken  filament  of  Arachne.  If,  how- 
ever, you  once  got  inside  the  mind  of  the  said  under- 
graduate, so  that  you  could  feel  out  in  every  di- 
rection from  the  centre  of  it;  if  you  knew  and 
admitted  precisely  what  it  was  like,  what  was  its  de- 
gree of  organization  or  lack  of  organization;  if,  to 
change  the  figure,  you  knew  what  parts  of  it  would 
hold  or  stretch,  and  what  were  its  native  motions, 
and  so  on,  you  might  draw  that  mind,  not  only  to 
the  outskirts,  but  to  the  very  pulsating  heart,  of  civi- 
lization, and  might  do  so  with  a  cobweb,  or  some 
form  even  more  ethereal — ^let  us  say,  with  a  Platonic 
idea.  First  of  all,  then,  the  speaker  must  know  the 
soul  of  the  listener. 

Thus  the  treatises  of  Plato  and  Aristotle  on  rhetoric 
have  the  character,  not  of  many  recent  works  on  the 
subject,  but  of  works  on  psychology;  so  that  act- 


THE  BHETOBIC  OF  ARISTOTLE  149 

ually  there  is  more  to  be  learned  about  human  na- 
ture from  the  Rhetoric  of  Aristotle  than  from  his 
essay,  the  De  Anmia,  on  psychology  in  the  more  tech- 
nical sense.  These  treatises  reveal  the  nature  of 
the  man  in  the  audience;  they  disclose  the  pattern 
of  the  mind,  and  the  pattern  of  the  argument  that 
will  catch  that  mind;  they  discuss  the  traits  of  hu- 
manity in  its  various  classes,  and  in  the  various 
times  and  circumstances  of  life.  For  several  rea- 
sons they  have  a  special  value  in  this  country  at  the 
present  juncture,  or  would  have  it  if  they  were  care- 
fully studied.  Even  the  minor  truths  to  be  ex- 
tracted from  them  are  significant.  It  is  clear,  for 
example,  that  one  will  hardly  gain  the  love  of  an 
elderly  miser  with  the  bait  one  has  ready  for  a 
prodigal  Sophomore,  or  a  group  of  such. 

This  brings  us  to  our  sheep.  If  I  refuse  to  dis- 
cuss at  length  the  modern  study  of  rhetoric  which 
goes  under  the  name  of  'English,'  it  is  because  that 
study  is  typical  of  our  whole  system  of  liberal  edu- 
cation so-called.  This  does  not  begin  where  it  should 
begin — that  is,  with  a  consideration  of  the  soul  of 
the  learner.  It  confuses  means  and  ends,  or  rather 
neglects  the  end  entirely.  Instead  of  discovering, 
and  then  assuming,  that  a  certain  kind  of  person 
must  be  taught,  it  assumes  that  certain  subjects — a 
great  many — must  be  taught,  and  trusts  that  the 
proper  students  will  gravitate  to  the  classes  in  the 
several  subjects.  In  other  words,  what  passes  for  a 
liberal  education  in  our  American  colleges  and  uni- 
versities does  not  rest  upon  an  adequate  inquii-y 
11 


150  PATTERNS 

into  the  veritable  traits  of  the  typical  American  at 
eighteen  or  twenty  years  of  age.  It  is  not  based 
upon  a  sound  estimate  of  his  very  great  excellences, 
his  undeniably  grave  defects.  How  can  it,  then, 
proceed  to  restrain  and  develop  him  according  to  a 
rational  method?  The  first  question  is  not.  What 
subjects  shall  we  teach?  It  is  rather,  What  is  the 
essential  nature  of  the  pupil?  What  is  the  pattern 
of  his  mind?  What  is  he  like?  The  answers  to  all 
other  questions  in  education  depend  upon  our  an- 
swer to  this  fundamental  inquiry.  We  may  there- 
fore enter  into  a  brief  examination  of  the  following 
topic  or  topics: 

The  American  undergraduate:  What  he  is  like; 
Why  he  is  so;  and.  What  we  had  best  do  with  him. 

First,  What  is  he  like  ?  With  certain  reservations, 
easily  made,  we  may  say  he  is  like  a  young  Athen- 
ian of  the  fourth  century  b.c.  I  quote  from  the 
Rhetoric  of  Aristotle,  Book  2,  chapter  12 :  ^ 

'The  young  are  in  character  prone  to  desire,  and 
ready  to  carry  any  desire  they  may  have  formed 
into  action.  Of  bodily  desires  it  is  the  sexual  to 
which  they  are  most  disposed  to  give  way,  and  in 
regaxd  to  sexual  desire  they  exercise  no  self-restraint. 
They  are  changeful,  too,  and  fickle  in  their  desires, 
which  are  as  transitory  as  they  are  vehement;  for 
their  wishes  are  keen  without  being  permanent,  like 
a  sick  man 's  fits  of  hunger  and  thirst.  They  are  pas- 
sionate ;  irascible  and  apt  to  be  carried  away  by  their 
impulses.  They  are  the  slaves,  too,  of  their  passion, 
as  their  ambition  prevents  their  ever  brooking  a 
slight,  and  renders  them  indignant  at  the  mere  idea 
of  enduring  an  injury.    And  while  they  are  fond  of 

*  Welldon  's  translation,  pp.  164-6. 


AHISTOTLE  ON  'YOUTH'  151 

honor,  they  are  fonder  still  of  victory;  for  superior- 
ity is  the  object  of  youthful  desire,  and  victory  is  a 
species  of  superiority.  Again,  they  are  fonder  both 
of  honor  and  of  victory  than  of  money,  the  reason 
why  they  care  so  little  for  money  being  that  they 
have  never  yet  had  experience  of  want.  .  .  .  They 
are  charitable  rather  than  the  reverse,  as  they  have 
never  yet  been  witnesses  of  many  villainies;  and 
they  are  trustful,  as  they  have  not  yet  been  often 
deceived.  They  are  sanguine,  too ;  for  the  young  are 
heated  by  Nature  as  drunken  men  by  wine,  not  to 
say  that  they  have  not  yet  experienced  frequent  fail- 
ures. Their  lives  are  lived  principally  in  hope,  as 
hope  is  of  the  future  and  memory  of  the  past,  and 
while  the  future  of  youth  is  long,  its  past  is  short; 
for  on  the  first  day  of  life  it  is  impossible  to  remem- 
ber anything,  but  all  things  must  be  matters  of  hope. 
For  the  same  reason  they  are  easily  deceived,  as  be- 
ing quick  to  hope.  They  are  inclined  to  be  valorous ; 
for  they  are  full  of  passion,  which  excludes  fear,  and 
of  hope,  which  inspires  confidence;  as  anger  is  in- 
compatible with  fear,  and  the  hope  of  something 
good  is  itself  a  source  of  confidence.  They  are  bash- 
ful, too,  having  as  yet  no  independent  standard  of 
honor,  and  having  lived  entirely  in  the  school  of 
conventional  law.  They  have  high  aspirations;  for 
they  have  never  yet  been  humiliated  by  the  experi- 
ence of  life,  but  are  unacquainted  with  the  limiting 
force  of  circumstances;  and  a  great  idea  of  one's 
own  deserts,  such  as  is  characteristic  of  a  sanguine 
disposition,  is  itself  a  form  of  high  aspiration.  Again, 
in  their  actions  they  prefer  honor  to  expediency,  as 
it  is  habit  rather  than  calculation  which  is  the  rule 
of  their  lives;  and  while  calculation  pays  regard  to 
expediency,  virtue  pays  regard  exclusively  to  honor. 
Youth  is  the  age  when  people  are  most  devoted  to 
their  friends  or  relations  or  companions,  as  they  are 


152  PATTEENS 

then  extremely  fond  of  social  intercourse,  and  have 
not  yet  learnt  to  judge  their  friends,  or  indeed  any- 
thing else,  by  the  rule  of  expediency.  If  the  young 
commit  a  fault,  it  is  always  on  the  side  of  excess  and 
exaggeration,  in  defiance  of  Chilon's  maxim  [/at^Sev 
ayav  ]  ;  for  they  carry  everything  too  far,  whether  it 
be  their  love,  or  hatred,  or  anything  else.  They  re- 
gard themselves  as  omniscient,  and  are  positive  in 
their  assertions;  this  is,  in  fact,  the  reason  of  their 
carrying  everything  too  far.  Also,  their  offenses 
take  the  line  of  insolence  and  not  of  meanness.  They 
are  compassionate  from  supposing  all  people  to  be 
virtuous,  or  at  least  better  than  they  really  are;  for 
as  they  estimate  their  neighbors  by  their  own  guile- 
lessness,  they  regard  the  evils  which  befall  them  as 
undeserved.  Finally,  they  are  fond  of  laughter,  and 
consequently  facetious,  facetiousness  being  disci- 
plined insolence.' 

In  the  main  this  description  is  good  for  all  time.  Yet 
there  are  ways  in  which  the  young  American  differs 
from  his  fellow  in  ancient  Greece.  For  one  thing,  he 
tends,  like  the  young  Englishman,  to  be  cleaner  than 
the  young  man  on  the  Continent  of  Europe,  north  or 
south.  On  the  other  hand,  he  is  less  childlike,  less 
observant  of  detail,  less  fond  of  contemplating  forms. 
His  memory  is  poor,  for  his  images  are  indistinct.  He 
is  like  what  he  likes,  preferring  games  that  require 
physical  strength  and  dexterity  to  various  kinds  of 
mental  strife,  such  as  the  study  of  Greek,  or  solid 
geometry.  He  is  unlike  what  he  dislikes ;  and  on  the 
whole  he  has  acquired  a  dislike  of  what  Plato  calls 
ideas — what  we  have  here  chosen  to  call  patterns.  His 
mind  is  not  like  the  orb  of  Arachne,  whose  weaving  of 


THE  MIND  OF  THE  UNDERGRADUATE  153 

figures  was  unsurpassed  among  mortals.  The  Ameri- 
can youth  has  lost  what  the  American  child  possesses, 
natural  accuracy  of  observation,  unappeasable  curi- 
osity, a  love  of  artistic  structure,  a  retentive  memory 
for  form. 

If  it  be  conceded  that  the  American  undergraduate 
is  in  general  pretty  much  the  sort  of  person  we  have 
been  describing,  why  is  he  so?  How  does  he  come  to 
be  what  he  is,  willing  to  go  through  the  motions  of  an 
education,  yet  no  lover  of  ideal  distinctions  or  distinct 
ideas?  In  the  main,  not  because  our  American  stock 
is  bad — it  is  mainly  good  and  promising  in  itself ;  but 
because  of  bad  teaching.  No  learning  in  the  home,  bad 
teaching  in  the  schools.  Save  in  a  few  cities  with  an 
excellent  tradition,  there  is  chaos  in  the  American 
public  schools.  We  hear  not  a  little  about  the  utility, 
or  the  worth,  or  the  lack  of  either  utility  or  worth,  to 
be  found  in  one  study  or  another ;  but  the  country  does 
not  value  the  teacher ;  if  he  strictly  attends  to  his  own 
concern  of  studying  and  teaching,  he  has  neither  fame 
nor  money  for  his  efforts.  In  treating  him  thus,  the 
country  does  itself  a  great  wrong ;  but  it  does  itself  a 
greater  wrong  in  not  obtaining  expert  service.  In  com- 
parison with  a  teacher  in  Prance — not  to  mention  Ger- 
many— our  American  is  hopelessly  ill-trained  in  the 
subjects  in  which  he  professes  to  instruct.  And  she — 
for  we  may  now  change  the  gender — she  does  not  con- 
tinue long  enough  in  the  profession  to  learn  the  art  of 
instruction.  It  requires  at  least  three  years  to  learn 
this  art;  not  half  who  begin  the  process  pursue  it  so 
long.    The  result  is  that,  by  a  generous  estimate,  all 


154  PATTEENS 

our  pupils  are  in  the  hands  of  underpaid  teachers,  ill- 
trained  in  their  subjects,  and  inexpert  in  class,  for  half 
the  time ;  or  half  the  pupils  are  in  such  hands  all  the 
time.  The  richest  commonwealth  in  the  world'  will  put 
money  into  school-buildings,  sanitary  devices,  adminis- 
trative officers,  and  janitors,  but  not  into  the  training 
and  the  lives  of  teachers.  Let  us  say  nothing  of  classes 
of  sixty  in  a  room,  when  fifteen  are  not  too  few  for 
efficient  instruction,  and  eighteen  begin  to  be  too  many ; 
nothing  of  the  multiplication  of  subjects  in  the'  school 
curriculum,  and  the  multiplication  of  interests  (activi- 
ties so-called)  outside,  until  it  is  impossible  to  learn 
any  one  fundamental  subject  well.  But  let  us  say  that 
the  conditions  of  teaching  in  the  public  schools  of 
America  are  bad,  for  every  unprejudiced  observer 
knows  it.  The  average  student  when  he  leaves  the  high 
school,  or  the  private  school,  is'  like  the  hero  of  the 
Homeric  Mar  git  es;  he  knows  a  great  many  things,  and 
all  very  badly ;  his  mind  has  not  thoroughly  mastered 
any  one  subject.  Thus  the  undergraduate  who  has  just 
entered  the  university  comes  with  the  powers  he  had 
as  a  child,  his  endowment  for  life,  almost  ruined ;  and 
in  a  plurality  of  cases  he  leaves  the  university  illiter- 
ate— ^he  has  not  assimilated  the  patterns  of  English 
speech.  Yet  there  is  more  hope  of  him  at  the  age  of 
twenty  or  thereabouts  than  of  his  elders  at  the  age  of 
forty.  His  imagination  is  still  capable  of  being  trained 
to  grasp  form  or  structure,  and  his  ability  to  observe 
and  to  remember  can  be  revived.  It  is  still  possible  to 
teach  him  to  think,  though  you  cannot  do  so  by  lectur- 
ing to  him  and  then  asking  him  to  write  in  an  exami- 


HOW  TO  SAVE  THE  PATTEENS  155 

nation-blank  a  part  of  what  you  have  told  him,  garbled. 

If  yet  there  is  hope,  what  are  we  going  to  do  about 
it  ?  This  is  our  third  and  last  question.  And  the  an- 
swer is  twofold,  since  there  is  a  problem  in  the  schools, 
and  a  problem  in  the  college  or  university ;  in  regard 
to  both  problems,  however,  let  us  not  go  beyond  what 
directly  eoncerns  the  university. 

To  begin  with,  we  must  eneourage  the  choicer  spirits 
in  our  classes  to  train  themselves  for  the  vocation  of 
teaching.  There  is  an  unfortunate  sentiment  often 
expressed  nowadays,  when  university  men,  including 
professors,  are  gathered  together,  to  the  effect  that  we 
ought  rather  to  discourage  young  men  and  women  from 
entering  our  profession,  just  because  conditions  are 
said  to  be  so  untoward.  People  deem  it  unfair  to  the 
individual  of  superior  mental  endowment  to  send  him 
into  a  field  where  the  pecuniary  rewards  are  so  inade- 
quate. To  this  we  must  reply  that  it  is  unfair  to  the 
country  not  to  direct  the  better  minds  into  this  very 
realm  of  endeavor.  If  we  passively  allow  the  mediocre 
person  to  drift  into  teaching,  affairs  can  only  go  from 
bad  to  worse.  The  chief  way  to  make  conditions  better 
is  not  to  induce  the  State  to  pay  more  money  to*  in- 
ferior and  untrained  servants,  but  to  provide  better 
service,  and  then  to  convince  the  public  that  the  in- 
struction it  receives  is  of  a  high  order,  given  by  men 
and  women  of  real  talent,  of  broad  as  well  as  intensive 
training,  and  expert  in  discovering  and  quickening 
ability  in  their  pupils.  If  all  who  are  concerned  were 
to  recognize  this  truth,  and  to  act  accordingly,  condi- 
tions would  be  radically  improved  within  half  a  gen- 


156  PATTEENS 

eration.  The  standing  of  the  profession  would  be 
higher,  and  the  salaries  would  be  more  satisfactory. 
Such  an  inference  at  all  events  is  warranted  by  the 
history  of  the  improvement  of  conditions  in  medicine 
and  law.  Meanwhile  let  no  one  who  has  a  true  call  to 
become  a  teacher  refuse  to  obey  for  sordid  reasons. 
How  many  a  choice  life  of  late  became  a  willing 
sacrifice  to  patriotic  duty !  How  many  a  young  man 
of  inherited  wealth  ungrudgingly  forsook  home  and 
opportunity,  and  ended  his  career  by  death  in  an  alien 
land  on  the  field'  of  battle !  And  are  we  now  to  admit 
that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  living  sacrifice  to  the 
welfare  of  the  nation  ?  Let  us  take  heed  lest  our  man- 
ner of  advice  to  the  young  imperil  the  higher  life  of 
America  for  years  to  come.  The  eternal  warfare  with 
ignorance,  unreason,  and  bad  taste,  has  not  ceased,  has 
no  cessation.  And  for  the  individual,  what  are  the  few 
luxuries  and  conveniences  the  teacher  must  forego  as 
compared  with  the  spiritual  satisfactions  constantly 
open  to  the  well-educated  and  effective  scholar  and 
teacher?  Accordingly,  we  need  have  no  hesitation 
about  advising  the  young  man  of  intellectual  promise 
to  engage  in  the  affair  of  education.  Only,  let  us  make 
sure  that  he  is  the  right  sort  of  person,  willing  to 
undergo  a  rigorous  preparation  in  the  graduate  school, 
so  as  to  run  no  risk  of  failure  in  mid-career. 

Such,  as  it  seems  to  me,  is  one  very  pressing  duty  of 
our  universities  at  the  present  time:  to  direct  the  fit 
though  few  into  the  path  of  scholarship  and  science ;  to 
develop  them  and  prepare  them  to  be  teachers — above 
all,  teachers  of  the  humanities ;  and  to  send  them,  thus 


HOW  TO  SAVE  THE  PATTEENS  157 

developed  and  prepared,  into  the  secondary  schools. 
In  this  way,  and  in  all  other  legitimate  ways,  we  must 
aim  to  persuade  the  thoughtful  men  of  the  nation,  and 
the  leaders  of  the  State,  that  the  contemplative  life 
transcends  the  active,  and  should  be  cherished  by  the 
government. 

But  to  return  to  the  mass  of  our  undergraduates,  or 
the  three-fifths  of  them  concerning  whom  there  is  hope. 
What  shall  be  done  with  the  undergraduate  as  he  is  ? 
What  actually  will  induce  this  unthinking  creature  to 
think? 

Let  him  read  Plato.  The  few  who  still  take  up  the 
study  of  Greek  should  read  as  much  of  Plato  as  may  be 
in  the  original,  supplementing  this  with  generous  por- 
tions in  a  good  translation.  They  should  begin  the 
reading  of  Greek  with  Homer  and  the  easier  parts  of 
the  Platonic  Dialogues,  and  not  with  anything  from 
Xenophon.  As  for  the  rest,  the  great  majority,  let 
them  live  with  Jowett's  translation,  taking,  for  ex- 
ample, the  Phcedrus  first,  then  the  Apology,  and  then 
the  Repuhlic.  We  should  gain  by  substituting  this 
version  of  Plato,  since  it  is  a  masterpiece  of  English, 
for  two-thirds  of  the  English  literature  now  read  in 
Fresliman  and  Sophomore  courses.  Were  we  to  pro- 
voke every  student  in  our  American  colleges  and  uni- 
versities to  buy  and  read  this  work,  within  the  space 
of  two  years  the  United  States  of  America  would  be- 
come a  nation  ready  for  the  highest  culture.  It  is 
Plato  who,  outside  the  sacred  books  of  our  religion, 
and  a  few  works  characteristic  of  the  Middle  Ages,  is 
the  grand  storehouse  of  human  ideas.    It  isi  he  who  has 


158  PATTERNS 

given  to  the  world  the  very  term  'idea.'  And  it  is 
ideas  that  our  students  chiefly  lack.  The  eager  student 
of  that  subject  in  the  eurriculum  to  which  we  apply 
the  misnomer  of  'English'  should  examine  the  mjrth 
of  the  soul  in  the  Phcedrus,  where  the  pattern  is  dis- 
tinct, before  he  eomes  to  the  myth  of  the  soul  in  Shel- 
ley's ode  To  a  Skylark,  where  the  pattern  is  vague  and 
disordered.  Let  him  become  acquainted  with  Plato- 
nism  clear  and  pure  at  its  source,  before  he  takes  up  the 
insecure — one  may  almost  say,  muddled — Platonism  of 
Wordsworth's  Ode,  Intimations  of  Immortality  from 
Recollections  of  early  Childhood. 

General  culture  means  the  possession  of  distinct  and 
important  ideas,  and  the  organization  of  these  ideas 
into  an  orderly  whole.  It  depends  upon  the  ability  to 
comprehend  structure,  and  the  habit  of  seeing  patterns 
objectively  with  the  mind's  eye.  But  this  eye  of  the 
mind  is  not  quite  like  an  eye ;  it  is  more  like  an  inner 
retina  or  network  of  lines  and  filaments.  To  go  back 
to  the  image  with  which  we  began,  it  is  a  kind  of  reticu- 
lated orb  like  the  web  of  our  spider.  We  desire  our 
student  to  possess  a  mind  like  the  fabric  hanging  be- 
tween the  fern  and  the  laurel  in  Bartram's  Garden, 
with  main  lines  of  support  and  communication  radi- 
ating from  the  centre  in  all  directions  outward,  with 
sympathetic  cross-<;ommunications  in  every  part,  and 
with  a  subtlfe,  active  intelligence  at  the  hub  of  the 
wheel.  Structure  within  the  mind  is  developed  by  the 
contemplation  of  structure  without.  No  other  single 
means  will  so  quickly  and  effectually  reproduce  an 
organized  mind  in  our  American  undergraduate  as  the 


PLATONIC   PATTERNS  159 

study  of  Plato.  The  statement  is  made  upon  the  basis 
of  repeated  experiment  with  individuals  of  this  genus 
— with  the  American  undergraduate  as  he  is,  and  not 
as  our  present  uncorrelated  curriculum  of  liberal 
studies  assumes  him  to  be. 

He  has  no  prepossessions  about  Plaito,  no  prejudice 
against  Plato  as  against  the  word  '  Greek, '  or  antiquity 
in  general;  and  Plato  instantly  captivates  him,  and 
will  transform  him  while  yet  there  is  hope.  Nay  more. 
Many  a  young  teacher  can  be  revivified  by  dancing  out 
a  mental  fight  or  figure  with  Plato — in  the  ThecetetiiSf 
or  the  Philebus.  And  it  is  perhaps  never  too  late  for 
any  one  to  learn  that  he  can  teach  his  pupils  more  if, 
instead  of  haranguing  them  in  lectures,  he  will  enter 
into  Socratic  eonversations  with  them  about  the  sub- 
ject he  and  they  may  have  in  hand. 
*     *     «     * 

If  the  criticism  of  Shelley  be  thought  severe,  the 
reader  should  note  again  precisely  what  is  said,  and 
what  is  not  said,  of  the  poet.  For  example,  I  care- 
fully avoid  saying:  Do  not  read  Shelley.  The  in- 
junction is:  Read  Plato  first — a  bit  of  advice  de- 
rived from  the  habit,  opinion,  and  counsel  of  Shelley 
himself.  Does  it  seem  ungracious  to  expose  the 
weakness  of  the  ode  To  a  Skylark,  and  the  inadvert- 
ence of  those  who  deem  it  excellent  without  rigor- 
ously testing  the  whole  by  the  standards  of  good 
sense  and  good  technique?  Of  the  inadvertent,  those 
who  are  open  to  conviction  may  consult  the  analy- 
sis of  the  ode  by  Professor  John  M.  Robertson;* 

*  In  New  Essays  towards  a  Critical  Method,  pp.  219-222. 


150  PATTERNS 

or  they  may  deal  with  the  ode  as  Socrates,  in  the 
Phcudrus,  deals  with  the  oration  of  Lysias,  thus:  It 
presents  an  untruth  in  the  first  place — 

Hail  to  thee,  blithe   Spirit! 
Bird  thou  never  wert. 

'Then  as  to  the  other  topics — are  they  not  thrown 
down  anyhow?  Is  there  any  principle  in  them? 
Why  should  the  next  topic  follow  next  in  order,  or 
any  other  topic?  I  cannot  help  fancying  in  my 
ignorance  that  he  wrote  off  boldly  just  what  came 
into  his  heaid ! '  ^ 

Would  the  entire  university  curriculum  be  dis- 
rupted if  we  were  to  introduce  the  study  of  Plato 
in  the  wholesale  fashion  suggested?  But  the  sugges- 
tion mainly  concerns  the  work  in  English  so-called. 
And  here  it  is  already  possible  to  read  almost  any- 
thing; the  teacher  now  has  virtually  complete  free- 
dom of  choice.  Meanwhile,  among  the  various  trends 
in  'English'  there  is  at  present  a  distinct  tendency 
in  favor  of  reading  more  and  more  of  the  ancient 
classics  in  translation;  in  the  next  few  years  we 
are  likely  to  see  a  kind  of  renaissance  of  classical 
study  in  this  guise.  But  it  would  seem  wise  to  direct 
the  tendency  according  to  sober  principles,  and 
neither  to  let  our  enthusiasms  run  away  with  us, 
nor  yet  merely  to  drift  with  the  educational  tide. 
Just  now  the  most  favored  translator  with  teachers 
of  English  is  Professor  Gilbert  Murray,  and  hence 
the  most  familiar  Attic  author  is  Euripides.     Mur- 

1  The  Dialogues  of  Plato,  trans,  by  Jowett,  1892,  1.  472. 


READ  PLATO  FIRST  161 

ray's  Euripides  is  better  food  for  our  young  people 
than  most  of  the  texts  in  the  list  of  the  College  En- 
trance Board  for  English.  But  Jowett's  Plato  (per- 
haps with  the  translation  of  the  Republic  by  Davies 
and  Vaughan)  is  better  yet. 

In  other  departments,  of  course,  there  has  been  a 
similar  tendency.  Since  few  of  the  students  who 
elect  philosophy  have  ever  studied  Greek,  the  pro- 
fessor of  philosophy  expects  his  class  to  read  the 
Republic  in  the  version  of  Davies  and  Vaughan ;  and 
the  professor  of  political  theory  is  likely  to  do  the 
same.  First  and  last,  a  goodly  number  of  their  col- 
leagues will  require  one  and  another  group  of  stu- 
dents to  read  more  or  less  of  Plato.  To  tell  the  truth, 
if  the  present  had  not  seemed  to  be  a  fair  opportu- 
nity to  strike  a  blow  of  a  particular  sort  in  favor  of 
good  sense  and  serious  reading,  I  might  have  waited 
for  a  better  time. 


X 


THINGS  NEW  AND  OLD^ 

Then  said  he  unto  them:  Therefore  every  scribe 
which  is  instructed  unto  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  is 
like  unto  a  man  that  is  an  householder,  which 
bringeth  forth  out  of  his  treasure  things  new  and 
old.2 

THIS  strange  and  pregnant  utterance  has  a 
deeper  meaning  for  the  religious  imagina- 
tion; but  for  a  secular  purpose  we  may  give  it  a 
secular  interpretation,  thus:  the  student  of  litera- 
ture who  has  digested  the  Republic  of  Plato  is,  as  it 
were,  a  man  of  unlimited  resources,  possessing  a 
store  of  ideas  upon  which  he  can  always  draw  for 
the  ends  of  life.  As  a  collateral  text  one  may  cite 
the  advice  which  the  father  of  Robert,  Earl  Lytton, 
gave  to  his  son :  '  Do  you  want  to  get  at  new  ideas  ? 
Read  old  books.  Do  you  want  to  find  old  ideas? 
Read  new  ones. '  ^ 

*  An  address  delivered  before  the  Classical  Section  of  the  Asso- 
ciation of  Colleges  and  Preparatory  Schools  of  the  Middle 
Atlantic  States  and  Maryland,  Princeton,  Nov.  30,  1918.  The 
address  was  published  in  The  Classical  WeeTcly  13.  107-111 
(Feb.  2,  1920),  from  which  it  is  now  reprinted,  in  a  slightly  re- 
vised form,  with  the  kind  consent  of  the  managing  editor. 

» Matt.  13.  52. 

'Austin  Dobson,  A  Bookman's  Budget,  1917,  p.  143. 
162 


IDEAS  AEE  NEITHEE  NEW  NOE  OLD  153 

A  teacher  of  the  modern  subject  of  English,  while 
doubtless  to  be  regarded  as  an  exponent  of  things 
new,  on  occasion  must  glance  at  the  interests  of  those 
who  in  the  general  mind  pass  for  teachers  of  things 
old  and  permanent — that  is,  of  the  ancient  classics; 
or  at  all  events  must  try  to  discover  what  there  is  of 
common  interest  to  both  ancients  and  moderns.  Yet 
the  instructed  scribe  of  either  sort  will  straightway 
admit  that  the  familiar  distinction  between  'old' 
and  'new'  ordinarily  has  no  scientific  value,  and  as 
a  rule  serves  only  to  darken  counsel.  The  *new' 
school  of  Dr.  Flexner,  for  example,  is  not  merely  as 
old  as  the  Emile  of  Rousseau;  it  is  as  old,  though 
not  so  fresh  and  good,  as  the  philosophy  of  Epicurus. 
And  the  'new  religion'  of  President  Eliot  was  act- 
ually described  more  than  half  a  century  in  advance 
by  Renan  in  his  essay  on  Channing ;  ^  in  fact,  being 
as  old  as  Stoicism,  it  is  not  so  new  as  the  New  Testa- 
ment. Accordingly,  both  ancients  and  moderns  will 
readily  grant  that  the  groundwork  of  a  sound 
general,  and  even  a  religious,  education  consists,  not 
of  things  old  as  such,  or  of  things  new  as  such,  but 
of  things  that  are  at  once  both  new  and  old.  In 
other  words  they  will  agree  that  a  general  educa- 
tion consists  in  the  assimilation  of  a  stock  or  fund  of 
ideas  which  are  by  nature  imperishable;  of  ideas 
which  are  the  potential  inheritance  of  every  intelli- 

1  Eliot,  The  Durable  Satisfactions  of  Life,  1910,  pp.  155  ff., 
esp.  pp.  160,  166;  compare  Eenan,  Etudes  d'Histoire  religieuse, 
1862,  p.  360  (pp.  357-403,  Channing  et  le  Mouvement  Unitaire 
aux  Etats  Unis) . 


154  THINGS  NEW  AND  OLD 

gent  human  being.  They  are  the  specific  property 
of  no  one  man  or  age.  They  may  be  acquired  by  any 
maja  or  nation  through  select  and  industrious  read- 
ing within  the  space  of  forty  years  or  less,  if  I  under- 
stand the  late  Sir  William  Osier,  though  Aristotle 
would  seem  to  suggest  forty-nine  years  as  the  cor- 
rect figure,  and  Plato  fifty.  They  may  all  be  met 
and  recognized  before  the  age  of  thirty,  to  judge 
from  the  five  years  spent  by  Milton  after  he  left 
Cambridge,  at  Horton,  and  the  eight  years  of  read- 
ing done  by  Swift  after  an  unsatisfactory  career  as 
a  student  at  Dublin.  Moreover,  one  man  differs 
from  another,  one  period  differs  from  another,  in 
the  way  each  man  or  period  reacts  to  the  common 
fund  of  human  ideas.  Thus  a  man  or  an  age  may 
possess  more  or  fewer  of  these  ideas,  may  possess 
some  number  of  them  more  or  less  distinctly,  and 
may  possess  them  in  more  free  or  more  restricted 
combination.  Novel  combination  of  old  ideas  is  some- 
times said  to  be  the  mark  of  genius  in  a  Shakespeare 
or  a  Goethe;  yet  it  is  clear  that  wealth  of  ideas  is 
also  a  characteristic  of  originality,  as  in  Plato;  and 
even  more  characteristic  is  the  habit  of  sharply  dis- 
tinguishing between  one  idea  and  another,  and  of 
seeing  the  sum-total  of  ideas  in  order  and  due  per- 
spective. 

This  last  quality  is  characteristic  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment, where  we  learn  that,  if  we  seek  first  the  most 
important  things,  or  ideas,  the  others  will  be  added 
to  us — on  the  principle  that  to  him  that  hath  shall 
be  given.    And  it  is  a  characteristic  of  the  literary 


WHERE  TO  FIND  IDEAS  165 

tradition  that  culminates  in  Dante,  who  sifts  and 
unites  the  gains  of  the  classical  and  the  mediaeval 
spirit,  and  whose  Vita  Nuova  and  Divina  Commedia 
as  a  result  are  strictly  the  most  original  productions 
in  literature  outside  the  Scriptures.  But  it  is  also 
a  characteristic  of  Plato. 

Wealth  of  ideas,  distinctness  of  ideas,  perspective 
and  emphasis  in  combining  them,  these,  we  may  say, 
are  the  end  and  aim  of  a  general  or  humane  educa- 
tion, at  least  on  the  intellectual  side.     If  we  admit 
this — and  who  will  deny  it? — the  main  question  for 
the  educator,  the  instructed  scribe,  then  becomes: 
What  are  the  most  effectual  means  of  transmitting 
the  largest  number  of  clear  and  important  human 
ideas  in  the  best  perspective?    Yet  there  is  another 
question,  or  perhaps  another  form  of  the  same  ques- 
tion, which  takes  precedence  of  this  one,  namely: 
Where  are  the  fullest  and  most  accessible  treasuries 
from  which  the  prudent  scribe  or  householder  may 
enrich  his  son  or  disciple?    We  have  here  in  mind, 
of  course,  what  is  termed  a  literary  education,  rather 
than  a  mathematical  or  scientific  one,  and  elemental 
thoughts,  rather  than  their  applications  and  modifi- 
cations; and  the  treasuries  we  immediately  consider 
are  books — works  proceeding  from  antiquity,  or  from 
the  Middle  Ages,  or  from  the  Renaissance  and  mod- 
ern times.     Indeed,  under  the  Renaissance  we  must 
include  everything  from  the  end  of  the  Middle  Ages 
down  to  the  present  time;  for  we  are  still  living  in 
the  Renaissance — or  were  until  August,  1914.    Since 
then,  perhaps,  for  better  as  well  as  worse,  for  better 
12 


X66  THINGS  NEW  AND  OLD 

rather  than  worse,  we  have  been  returning  to  the 
ideals  of  the  Middle  Ages. 

We  shall  at  any  rate  do  wisely  if  we  look  for  ideas 
in  the  place  where  we  are  certain  to  find  them. 
Thus  it  might  not  be  wise  to  look  for  them  in  the 
books  of  the  last  ten  years,  or  in  all  the  books  of  any 
particular  ten  years  in  history,  where  much  chaff 
necessarily  hides  but  little  wheat.  And  again,  it 
may  not  be  wise  for  the  general  student  to  trust  to 
the  sources  from  which  a  particular  man  of  great 
ideas  extracted  his  special  fund.  The  books  em- 
ployed by  a  Bunyan  or  a  Lincoln  are  likely  to  in- 
clude certain  volumes  of  perennial  worth;  and  his 
choice  of  teachers  is  always  instructive.  But  the 
genius  of  Lincoln,  feeding  in  the  main  upon  a  few 
significant  books,  was  otherwise  able  to  assimilate 
clarified  ideas  from  sources  that  might  furnish  in- 
different nourishment  to  the  mind  of  the  average 
man.  In  any  case,  we  must  discover  our  fund  of 
ideas  somewhere  in  the  past,  whether  the  near  past 
or  the  more  remote.  We  cannot  find  them  in  the  pres- 
ent, since  we  can  study  the  present  only  when  it  has 
gone  by  and  become  a  part  of  human  experience. 
As  for  the  future,  in  which  the  young  people  of  Illi- 
nois and  Kansas — and  even  of  the  State  of  New 
York — expect  to  meet  new  ideas  that  have  not  been 
expressed  in  old  books  like  the  ancient  classics,  it 
may  be  doubted  whether  we  shall  shortly  be  favored 
with  a  Plato  or  a  Dante  from  those  parts.  It  is  the 
simple  truth  that  the  source  of  virtually  all  the  hu- 
man ideas  thus  far  developed  has  been  one  or  an- 


ESCAPE  FROM  THE  RENAISSANCE  167 

other  part  of  the  civilization  that  grew  up  on  or 
near  the  shores  of  the  Mediterranean.  We  may  even 
affirm  that,  however  amplified  or  varied  the  applica- 
tion of  the  common  stock  of  ideas  has  been  in  the 
Renaissance,  the  additions  to  that  stock  since  the 
time  of  Dante  are  well-nigh  negligible.  The  main 
development  since  that  time  has  been  of  the  means 
of  communication  and  of  diffusion — the  printing- 
press,  the  telegraph  and  telephone,  and  various  forms 
of  artificial  locomotion;  there  has  not  been  a  signifi- 
cant increase  in  the  number  or  importance  of  the 
things  to  be  communicated;  nor  is  'diffusion'  always 
to  be  taken  in  a  favorable  sense.  One  may  read  an 
entire  newspaper  in  the  Sunday  edition,  or  an  en- 
tire number  of  a  current  magazine,  without  finding 
a  single  idea  of  permanent  value,  well  expressed. 

"We  may  therefore  raise  an  objection  to  the  com- 
mon practice,  exemplified  in  the  curriculum  of  every 
Protestant  school  and  college,  of  making  a  literary 
training  chiefly  consist  in  the  persual  of  authors  be- 
longing to  and  typical  of  the  Renaissance.  Besides 
the  reasons  I  have  suggested  for  this  objection,  others 
may  be  adduced.  For  example,  since  our  pupils  are 
living  in  the  Renaissance,  they  do  not  escape  from 
themselves  through  reading  these  authors;  the  indi- 
vidual student  tends  rather  to  stereotype  the  ideas 
which  already  govern  him.  Again,  the  casual  read- 
ing of  the  crowd  is  naturally  confined  to  this  period ; 
but  education  should  supply  deficiencies,  not  merely 
encourage  desires  that  will  satisfy  themselves,  once 
the  intellectual  curiosity  of  the  individual  has  been 


168  THINGS  NEW  AND  OLD 

awakened.  The  notion  I  wish  to  convey  will  be 
clearer  if  we  turn  to  a  matter  of  common  observa- 
tion, which  is  this:  the  reading  of  Renaissance  au- 
thors does  not  necessarily  lead  one  to  the  reading  of 
mediaeval  and  classical  masterpieces.  Thus  the  man 
who  has  read  Milton  may  not  have  read  Dante,  and 
the  man  who  has  read  Shakespeare  may  not  have 
read  Sophocles;  but  one  will  hardly  find  a  student 
of  Sophocles  who  has  not  read  Shakespeare,  or  a 
student  of  Dante  who  has  not  read  Milton.  Yet 
again,  the  more  difficult  part  of  education  is  the  ac- 
quisition of  self-restraint,  and  the  less  difficult,  the 
development  of  one's  natural  bent.  But  the  typical 
author  of  the  Renaissance  and  modem  times — a 
Montaigne,  a  Goethe,  a  Rousseau — glorifies  individu- 
alism, self-assertion,  self-expression,  self-develop- 
ment; whereas  the  classical  and  mediaeval  authors 
inculcate  self-restraint  and  self-denial.  Finally, 
what  we  call  bad  taste  would  almost  seem  to  be  the 
invention  of  the  Renaissance  and  a  special  property 
of  modern  times.  The  literature  of  the  Middle  Ages 
is  on  occasion  tedious;  and  the  ancient  classical  au- 
thors are  not  without  their  faults  of  style  and  de- 
ficiencies of  spirit.  But  bad  taste  as  we  know  it  in 
the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth  centuries  is  not  to  be 
detected  in  Plato,  or  in  classical  literature  as  a  whole, 
or  in  Dante,  any  more  than  it  is  to  be  found  in  the 
New  Testament.  Were  we  to  subordinate  Renais- 
sance to  ancient  and  mediaeval  writers  in  the  cur- 
riculum, we  should  tend  to  secure  the  pupil  in  his 
formative  stage  from  the  contamination  of  bad  taste. 


PLATO  AND  DANTE  169 

Yielding  to  none  in  my  love  of  what  is  best  in  Shake- 
speare and  Milton,  I  am  not,  of  course,  aiming  at  a 
wholesale  condemnation  of  Renaissance  authors,  or 
asserting  that  they  should  be  uncritically  excluded 
from  a  rational  scheme  of  studies. 

But  the  superiority  of  Dante  and  Plato  to  any 
writer  of  modern  times  cannot  be  denied,  when  we 
consider  each  as  a  grand  repository  of  human  ideas. 
Outside  the  Sacred  Scriptures,  these  two  authors  are 
in  this  respect  incomparable,  surpassing  the  greater 
or  lesser  among  the  encyclopaedic  minds  whose  works 
have  been  the  sources  of  supply  for  many  a  literary 
reputation — such  works,  I  mean,  as  those  of  Cicero, 
Plutarch,  Montaigne,  Bacon,  Leibnitz,  Goethe,  or 
Sainte-Beuve.  Serviceable  as  Plutarch  has  been  to 
a  Shakespeare,  Montaigne  to  an  Emerson,  or  Sainte- 
Beuve  to  a  generation  of  literary  critics,  or  as  De 
Quincey  has  been  to  a,  Ruskin,  or  Ruskin  to  many  a 
recent  English  writer,  not  one  of  them  will  replace 
Dante  or  Plato  as  a  treasury  of  ideas.  Taken  to- 
gether, these  two,  Plato  and  Dante,  virtually  sum 
up,  compactly,  the  germinal  notions  which  are  pos- 
sible to  human  kind. 

Yet  they  have  more  than  wealth  and  compactness 
to  recommend  them.  They  have  also  distinctness 
and  perspective  or  proportion.  And  these  two  quali- 
ties of  distinctness  and  perspective  suggest  that  the 
two  authors  are  not  merely  individual,  but  also 
representative.     What  do  they  represent? 

It  would  seem  that  they  represent  two  out  of  the 
three  greatest  literary  traditions  of  all  time,  in  which 


170  THINGS  NEW  AND  OLD 

the  wealth  and  importance  of  the  ideas  to  be  trans- 
mitted have  been  equaled  by  excellence  in  the  man- 
ner of  their  conveyance.  Chief  among  the  three  is 
the  tradition  of  the  Old  and  the  New  Testament; 
but  this  does  not  enter  into  the  present  discussion; 
though  pervasive  in  its  influence  upon  all  subse- 
quent European  literature,  it  has  its  own  special 
relation  to  the  secular  curriculum,  being  sui  generis, 
and  a  thing  apart — in  the  world,  but  not  of  it.  Of 
the  other  two,  one  is  manifestly  the  Graeco-Roman 
tradition,  beginning  with  Homer,  and  culminating 
in  the  Attic  drama  and  Plato,  yet  living  on  in  later 
Greek  poetry  and  in  the  poets  of  Rome.  The  other 
begins  in  the  tenth  century  with  the  troubadours 
of  southern  France,  culminates  in  Dante,  and  lives 
on  in  Petrarch.  For  each  of  the  two,  the  distinc- 
tive characteristic  is  perfection  of  artistic  form 
developed  through  an  unbroken  succession  of  poets, 
each  learning  from  his  predecessors,  striving  to  ad- 
vance beyond  them,  and  generally  successful  in  mak- 
ing old  things  new.  Except  for  the  Bible,  as  in  the 
relation  of  the  later  to  the  earlier  Psalms,  no  other 
literary  tradition  shows  the  same  excellence  arising 
from  close  continuity  and  straightforward  progress. 
No  such  phenomenon  can  be  observed,  for  example, 
in  the  literature  of  England,  though  there  is  some- 
thing like  it  in  the  progress  of  Old  English  poetry 
from  Cgedmon  to  the  school  of  Cynewulf.  But  subse- 
quently, in  their  mastery  of  poetic  form,  the  two 
leaders,  Shakespeare  and  Milton,  are,  we  may  con- 
tend, aliens  to  England;  for  Shakespeare,  with  all 


THEEE  LITEEAEY  TEADITIONS  171 

his  opulence,  attains  to  artistic  perfection,  not  in  his 
dramas,  but  in  some  of  his  sonnets,  which  are  ulti- 
mately Petrarchan;  and  the  artistic  mastery  of  Mil- 
ton comes  not  through  an  orderly  development  of 
English  literature;  from  a  distance,  and  after  an 
interval,  he  strives  to  combine  in  one  the  streams  of 
Mediterranean  tradition.  He  does  not,  like  Dante, 
or  like  Plato,  live  at  home  in  his  own  native  stream 
of  ideas  and  art.  But  he  could  not  have  done  better, 
and  his  practice  indicates  what  we  should  do  toward 
improving  the  ideals  of  a  literary  education:  study 
the  Bible — that  goes  without  saying;  and  otherwise 
betake  ourselves  to  the  schools  of  Plato  and  Dante. 
It  was  to  these  that  Shelley  betook  himself  (until 
then  a  very  mediocre  poet),  thereby  enriching  his 
substance,  and  greatly  improving  his  art. 

This  is  as  much  as  may  now  be  suggested  regarding 
storehouses  of  ideas— where  to  hunt  for  treasures.  Let 
us  briefly  consider  the  other  question — how  to  transmit 
the  fund  of  ideas  to  the  next  and  succeeding  genera- 
tions. I  have  elsewhere^  discussed  the  mediaeval  tradi- 
tion which  the  best  of  modern  scholars  are  engaged  in 
winnowing  for  the  future ;  to  the  student  of  English  a 
study  of  Germanic  and  Italian  or  Romance  origins  is 
of  more  immediate  concern  than  the  study  of  Greek 
and  Latin.  Yet  classical  studies  are  of  vital  interest 
to  the  teachers  of  modern  literature;  when  these 
studies  fail,  we  cannot  succeed.  Nor  could  there  be  a 
more  splendid  testimony  to  the  significance  of  classical 
scholarship  in  modern  life  than  the  body  of  recent 

1  See  below,  pp.  199-200,  262-6. 


172  THINGS  NEW  AND  OLD 

French  monographs  upon  English  authors ;  for  they  all 
derive  their  method  and  inspiration  from  the  work  of 
French  classical  scholars  like  Gaston  Boissier  and 
Alfred  and  Maurice  Croiset.  In  America,  however,  it 
would  seem  that  our  teachers  of  Greek  and  Latin  have 
not  in  recent  years  been  so  directly  helpful  to  students 
of  English.  Indeed,  if  I  may  speak  for  myself,  I  have 
had  to  learn  the  most  needful  things  in  the  domain  of 
classical  studies  either  from  teachers  of  English  or  by 
myself — such  needful  things,  that  is,  as  the  Poetics  of 
Aristotle  and  the  Encyklopddie  of  August  Boeckh, 
which  metamorphose  and  energize  one 's  conceptions  of 
literary  and  linguistic  study.  Why,  we  may  ask,  do 
American  classical  scholars,  in  contrast  with  those  of 
France,  make  so  little  use  of  these  books  in  their  teach- 
ing— above  all,  in  the  training  of  teachers  for  the  sec- 
ondary schools?  Or,  to  approach  the  problem  from 
another  angle,  why  should  a  bright  young  woman  from 
the  Middle  West,  one  who  had  read  Caesar  and  Xeno- 
phon,  be  filled  with  astonishment,  after  reading  a  little 
of  Jowett's  Plato  for  a  course  in  English,  that  no  one 
had  ever  before  directed  her  to  this  magical  source  of 
ideas?  Why,  thought  she,  was  I  robbed  of  my  birth- 
right ?  The  fault  must  lie  partly  in  the  general  state 
of  education  in  America ;  it  also  lies  in  part  with  our 
teachers  of  the  classics.  I  hope  they  will  bear  with  me 
if  I  complain  a  little  and  advise  a  little  on  this  subject. 
Faithful  are  the  wounds  of  a  friend. 

We  teachers  of  modern  literature — of  Shakespeare, 
for  example — have  just  cause  for  complaint  that  our 
pupils  have  read  Caesar,  and  are  not  familiar  with 


MOEE  HELP  FEOM  THE  CLASSICS  173 

Ovid ;  since  perhaps  the  main  difficulty  in  the  allusions 
of  Shakespeare,  and  even  of  Milton,  has  ceased  to  exist 
for  a  student  who  has  read  portions  of  the  Metamor- 
phoses. Again,  if  our  Sophomores  are  so  lucky  as  to 
have  read  a  little  Greek,  it  has  been  Xenophon  rather 
than  Plato ;  and  hence  they  cannot  understand  Shelley. 
But,  strictly  speaking,  and  not  to  mention  Greek,  they 
cannot  read  Latin  at  all,  one  reason  being  that  their 
teachers  in  the  secondary  schools  cannot  do  so  either. 
These  teachers,  naturally,  cannot  transmit  a  habit  that 
they  do  not  possess,  and  will  never  inspire  a  class  with 
the  faith  that  it  can  do  what  is  not  done.  But  why 
should  not  a  teacher  of  the  classics  in  the  high  school 
read  classical  authors  wholesale,  as  his  or  her  colleague 
in  French  or  German  reads  authors  in  either  of  these 
tongues  ?  Sympathize  though  we  may  with  the  diffi- 
culties under  which  classical  teachersi  labor  in  this 
country,  it  is  the  simple  truth  that,  with  nearly  all  the 
best  cards^ — ^the  most  fascinating  authors — in  their 
hands,  they  have  not  known  how  to  play  the  game. 
They  continue  to  assign  the  reading  of  the  Gallic  War, 
and  the  orations  against  Catiline,  which  vitally  inter- 
est but  a  few  boys,  and  almost  no-  girls,  and  they  with- 
hold Ovid,  who  would  interest  all.  And  they  insist 
upon  Xenophon,  who,  if  not  always  prosy,  is  yet  as 
prosy  as  a  Greek  can  be.^    And  why  do  they  insist? 

*  I  do  not  wish  to  imply  that  Caesar,  or  Cicero,  or  Xenophon,  is 
uninteresiting  when  approached  in  the  right  way ;  but  it  is  unde- 
niable that  the  rank  land  file  of  teachers  make  them  so ;  whereas 
it  is  not  so  easy  for  a  bad  t«acher  to  spoil  the  ^neid  or  the 
Odyssey, 


174  THINGS  NEW  AND  OLD 

Because,  forsooth,  be  writes  Attic  Greek  that  is  not  too 
hard!  Meanwhile  these  pupils  are  bereft  of  the 
natural  pleasure  and  stimulus  which  come  from  the 
habit  of  continuous  reading ;  though  if  you  make  the 
Greek  or  Latin  easy  enough,  and  interesting  enough,  it 
is  as  possible  to  acquire  the  habit  for  either  of  these 
as  for  French  or  German.  You  must,  of  course,  have 
teachers  who  can  and  do  read  books  and  authors  in  the 
languages  they  profess  to  teach.  But  you  must  also 
see  to  it  that,  with  some  intensive  study  for  the  sake 
of  grammar  and  syntax,  there  goes  much  extensive 
reading  on  the  part  of  the  class:  Let  us  not  be  afraid 
of  the  methods  of  those  who  teach  the  modem  lan- 
guages. It  is  better  also  to  read  one  book  of  the  Odys- 
sey in  the  original,  and  the  rest  in  the  translation  of 
Butcher  and  Lang,  than  two  books  of  the  original  and 
nothing  more. 

I  sing  of  things  old  and  new.  For  years  we  have 
been  facing  changed  conditions  in  teaching  Greek  and 
Latin ;  and  the  present,  they  say,  is  a  critical  time  for 
Greek.  The  classical  teachers  appear  to  realize  that 
they  are  in  a  predicament ;  but  what  have  they  done, 
what  are  they  doing,  about  it  ?  Very  likely  more  than 
I  have  heard  of,  but  surely  not  enough;  for  more  is 
needed  than  a  general  campaign  of  advertising  to 
awaken  a  heedless  public,  more  than  eloquent  replies 
to  Dr.  Flexner  and  his  school,  more  than  Latin  exhibi- 
tions in  the  halls  of  public  buildings.  I  am  far  from 
underrating  the  value  of  such  efforts,  or  the  admirable 
spirit  of  those  persons  who  make  them.  More  impor- 
ant,  however,  are  the  results  attained  in  certain  text- 


NEW  BOOKS   FOR   GEEEK  AND   LATIN         175 

books  like  Professor  Goodell's  The  Greek  in  English, 
The  First  Year  of  Greek  by  Professor  Allen,  and  the 
Latin  readers  projected  by  Professor  Clark  and  his 
coadjutor,  Mr.  Game.  But  all  these  enterprises,  so  far 
as  they  are  known  to  me,  are  in  certain  ways  too  much 
of  a  concession,  and  in  certain  waysi  too  little.  With 
all  deference  to  scholars  who  know  far  more  of  Greek 
and  Latin  than  I  can  ever  hope  to  know,  let  me  never- 
theless as  a  teacher  of  English  assume  that  we  need  a 
new  Greek  Lesson-book  and  Reader,  say  a  volume  of 
six  or  seven  hundred  pages,  and  a  similar  volume  for 
beginning  Latin.  The  principles  governing  these 
books  I  trust  we  should  all  agree  to.  The  details  should 
be  worked  out  by  experts,  though  in  each  case,  per- 
haps, under  the  guidance  of  a  single  editor;  what  I 
say  of  these  details  must  be  regarded  as  mainly  tenta- 
tive or  rather  suggestive,  and  in  no  sense  final  and 
complete.  In  the  volume  for  Latin  there  should  be, 
first  of  all,  such  minimum  of  grammar  and  syntax  as 
is  indispensable  for  any  progress  at  all  in  reading. 
But  it  must  be  strictly  a  minimum.  We  must,  for  our 
beginners,  have  less  grammar  at  the  outset,  though 
what  is  given  will  have  to  be  thoroughly  mastered  in 
a  few  weeks,  with  constant  reference  back  and  forth 
from  numbered  point  in  the  text  to  numbered  point 
in  the  grammar.  But  it  must  always  be  remembered 
that  the  main  difficulty  is  not  grammar  or  syntax,  but 
vocabulary ;  this  is  true  of  all  languages,  it  is  true  of 
Greek  and  Latin.  Much  grammar  should  be  reserved 
until  later  in  the  first  year,  some  until  the  following 
year,  and  some  until  after  the  Day  of  Judgment.    For 


176  THINGS  NEW  AND  OLD 

the  rest,  there  should  be  several  hundred  pages  of  easy, 
interesting,  and  as  far  asi  possible  connected  reading ; 
and  reading  should  begin  at  the  second  meeting  of  the 
class.  Among  the  earlier  passages  in  the  book  there 
should  be  some  for  memorizing ;  here  the  Latin  should 
of  course  be  pure,  but  the  order  as  near  as  possible  to 
that  of  English ;  these  should  be  accompanied  by  close 
and  exact  translations  into  natural  English,  the  trans- 
lations also  to  be  memorized.  It  is  astonishing  how- 
much  of  a  foreign  language  can  be  quickly  learned  by 
this  means,  and  how  many  important  grammatical  and 
syntactical  forms  can  thus  be  acquired  in  advance  of 
the  learning  of  paradigms.  Meanwhile  the  teacher  has 
texts  of  reference  for  points  of  usage,  not  vaguely 
placed  somewhere  in  a  book,  but  clearly  written  in  the 
mind  of  his  pupil.  In  the  first  fifty  or  one  hundred 
pages  there  should  be  a  great  deal  of  narrative  adapted 
from  the  more  familiar  parts  of  the  Bible  in  the 
Vulgate;  additions  might  be  made  from  apocryphal 
accounts  of  the  childhood  of  Christ,  in  Latin,  of  course. 
I  know  of  nothing  which  the  average  student  reads 
with  more  avidity.  But  the  book  as  a  whole  should 
contain  mostly  narrative,  drawn  from  Ovid,  Virgil, 
and  such  things  as  the  Dream  of  Scipio.  Surely  this 
last  is  more  attractive  to  the  youthful  mind  than  are 
the  orations  a^inst  Catiline;  as  indeed  it  might  be 
well  to  throw  over  all  the  orations  of  Cicero  in  favor 
of  his  letters,  if  our  aim  is  to  enlist  the  interest  of  the 
pupil  on  the  side  of  his  own  education.  There  would 
be  no  objection  to  observing  the  principle  of  pro- 
gressive difficulty,  as  we  advanced  toward  the  end  of 


A  NEW  LATIN  READER  177 

the  book;  but  the  main  principle  should  be:  Lesen; 
viel  lesen;  viel,  viel  lesen.  In  fact,  difficult  passages 
should  for  the  most  part  be  simplified  by  the  editor ; 
glosses  and  side-notes,  even  interlinear  translations, 
should  be  supplied  where  difficulties  cannot  be  avoided 
or  excised,  and  summaries  of  omitted  intervening 
passages  should  be  given  in  English;  the  editor  and 
his  helpers  should  virtually  rewrite  a  large  part  of  the 
Latin  in  the  volume.  The  book  might  thus  include  the 
whole  story  of  the  ^neid,  which  is  criminally  treated 
when  but  the  first  half  or  third  is  read  without  refer- 
ence to  the  end.  If  it  be  necessary  to  rewrite  Virgil, 
using  his  own  words  where  possible,  and  to  print  the 
paraphrase  as  normal  Latin  prose,  by  all  means  let 
Virgil  be  rewritten.  This  would  not  preclude  the  occa- 
sional insertion  of  metrical  excerpts,  or  the  learning 
of  them  with  the  help  of  a  teacher  who  knew  the  music 
of  the  Virgilian  lines.  If  the  Latin  of  the  Vulgate,  or 
if  other  medieval  Latin,  be  not  pure  enough  for  the 
purists,  let  the  editor  improve  it,  so  long  as  he  does  not 
make  the  order  more  difficult.  But  as  I  have  sug- 
gested, much  editorial  effort  should  be  devoted  to  re- 
ducing the  Latin,  wherever  possible,  to  the  order  of  the 
modern  languages — which  happens  to  be  the  order  of 
Greek  also.  Finally  there  should  be  a  full  glossary.  I 
have  said  nothing  of  written  composition;  exercises 
might,  or  might  not,  be  included  in  the  same  volume. 
There  is  no  reason  why  several  books  should  not  be 
employed  in  a  course.  Were  I  teaching  Latin,  I  should 
expect  my  students  to  read  a  certain  amount  of  Latin 
literature  in  the  first  year  in  the  best  English  transla- 


178  THINGS  NEW  AND  OLD 

tions.  And  the  same  thing  would  be  true  were  I  teach- 
ing Greek. 

For  the  Greek  Grammar  and  Reader,  all  in  one,  a 
similar  procedure  should  be  followed.  The  selections 
should  be  made  into  continuous  reading.  Passages  of 
significant  and  connected  discourse  should  be  memor- 
ized with  their  English  translations.  Homer  and 
Herodotus  should  be  freely  excerpted  and  adapted, 
virtually  Atticized  perhaps,  the  chief  difficulties  being 
removed  or  glossed.  Many  inflected  forms  should  be 
recognized  as  individual  words  before  they  are  seen  in 
the  artificial  order  of  the  paradigms.  I,  for  one,  should 
omit  the  Anabasis  of  Xenophon  altogether,  whatever 
the  injury  to  existent  text-books  and  current  royalties. 
Certain  easier  passages  from  Plato  should  be  included ; 
some  of  the  more  significant  myths,  with  the  difficul- 
ties removed  or  glossed;  perhaps  one  or  two  of  the 
shorter,  less  abstruse  dialogues,  with  an  argument  at 
the  beginning  of  each,  and  occasional  summaries,  in 
English.  As  in  the  Latin  Reader,  narrative  portions 
of  the  Bible  should  eome  near  the  beginning,  with 
occasional  rewriting  or  rewording  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment in  the  Septuagint  and  of  the  New  Testament. 
Here,  again,  the  apocryphal  accounts  of  the  childhood 
of  Christ  might  be  used  to  great  advantage.  And  as 
some  of  the  simpler  Latin  hymns  might  be  included 
in  the  Latin  Reader,  so,  perhaps,  certain  of  the  simpler 
Greek  hymns  here.  And  again  there  should  be  a  full 
Greek  and  English  glossary. 

Do  these  proposals  seem  unduly  novel  ?  They  could 
hardly  be  so  strange  as  the  chance  that,  out  of  all  the 


HOW  ANDREW  LANG  BEGAN  GREEK  179 

possible  combinations  of  authors  in  the  rich  and  varied 
literature  of  antiquity,  has  made  Caesar  and  Xenophon 
mean  'classical'  to  a  large  part  of  young  America;  or 
the  chance  that  upon  these  two  as  foundation  should 
be  reared  the  entire  structure  of  a  classical  course — 
should  be  determined  the  order  and  nature  of  the 
texts,  the  apparatus,  the  method  of  teaching.  These 
proposals  are  not  more  strange  than  the  inability  of 
most  classical  teachers  to  stand  aside  and  look  at  them- 
selves and  their  work  ah  extra.  They  would  not  seem 
strange  to  Andrew  Lang.  Since  formulating  them,  I 
have  consulted  his  paper  on  Homer  and  the  Study  of 
Greek,  which  sustains  with  force  and  skill  the  main 
positions  I  have  been  upholding.  I  quote  a  passage 
from  one  who  did  much  to  vivify  our  times  through 
the  vital  things  of  the  past.  To  what  he  says  of  gram- 
mar nearly  every  one  will  hear  an  echo  from  within. 
And  what  he  says  of  Homer  is  mostly  applicable  to 
Plato  as  well : 

'At  present  boys  are  introduced  to  the  language 
of  the  Muses  by  pedantically  written  grammars,  full 
of  the  queerest  and  most  arid  metaphysical  and  philo- 
logical verbiage.  The  very  English  in  which  these 
deplorable  books  are  composed  may  be  scientific,  may 
be  comprehensible  by  and  useful  to  philologists,  but 
is  utterly  heartbreaking  to  boys.  .  .  .  The  grammar, 
to  them,  is  a  mere  buzz  in  a  chaos  of  nonsense.  .  .  . 
When  they  struggle  so  far  as  to  be  allowed  to  try- 
to  read  a  piece  of  Greek  prose,  they  are  only  like  the 
Marchioness  in  her  experience  of  beer;  she  once  had 
a  sip  of  it.  Ten  lines  of  Xenophon,  narrating  how 
he  marched  so  many  parasangs  and  took  breakfast, 
do  not  amount  to  more  than  a  very  unrefreshing  sip 


180  THINGS  NEW  AND  OLD 

of  Greek.  .  .  .  The  boys  stra-ggle  along  with  Xeno- 
phon,  knowing  not  whence  or  whither.  .  .  .  One  by 
one  they  fall  out  of  the  ranks;  they  mutiny  against 
Xenophon;  they  murmur  against  that  commander; 
they  desert  his  flag.  They  determine  that  anything 
is  better  than  Greek,  that  nothing  can  be  worse  than 
Greek,  and  they  move  the  tender  hearts  of  their 
parents.  ...  Up  to  a  certain  age  my  experiences  at 
school  were  precisely  those  which  I  have  described. 
Our  grammar  was  not  so  philological,  abstruse,  and 
arid  as  the  instruments  of  torture  employed  at  pres- 
ent. But  I  hated  Greek  with  a  deadly  and  sickening 
hatred;  I  hated  it  like  a  bully  and  a  thief  of  time. 
.  .  .  Then  we  began  to  read  Homer;  and  from  the 
very  first  words,  in  which  the  Muse  is  asked  to  sing 
the  wrath  of  Achilles,  Peleus'  son,  my  mind  was 
altered,  and  I  was  the  devoted  friend  of  Greek.  Here 
was  something  worth  reading  about;  here  one  knew 
where  one  was;  here  was  the  music  of  words,  here 
were  poetry,  pleasure,  and  life.  We  fortunately  had 
a  teacher  (Dr.  Hodson)  who  was  not  wildly  enthusi- 
astic about  grammar.  He  would  set  us  long  pieces 
of  the  Iliad  or  Odyssey  to  learn,  and,  when  the  day 's 
task  was  done,  would  make  us  read  on,  adventuring 
ourselves  in  "the  unseen,"  and  construing  as  gal- 
lantly as  we  might,  without  grammar  or  dictionary. 
On  the  following  day  we  surveyed  more  carefully 
the  ground  we  had  pioneered  or  skirmished  over, 
and  then  advanced  again.  Thus,  to  change  the 
metaphor,  we  took  Homer  in  large  draughts,  not  in 
sips:  in  sips  no  epic  can  be  enjoyed.  .  .  .  The  result 
was  not  the  making  of  many  accurate  scholars, 
though  a  few  were  made;  others  got  nothing  better 
than  enjoyment  in  their  work,  and  the  firm  belief, 
opposed  to  that  of  most  schoolboys,  that  the  ancients 
did  not  write  nonsense.  .  .  .  Judging  from  this  ex- 
ample, I  venture  very  humbly  to  think  that  any  one 
who,  even  at  the  age  of  Cato,  wants  to  learn  Greek, 


MAKING  ALL  THINGS  NEW  181 

should  begin  where  Greek  literature,  where  all  pro- 
fane literature  begins — with  Homer  himself.  It  was 
thus,  not  with  grammars  in  vacuo,  that  the  great 
scholars  of  the  Renaissance  began.  It  was  thus  that 
Ascham  and  Rabelais  began,  by  jumping  into  Greek 
and  splashing  about  till  they  learned  to  swim. '  ^ 

This  stimulating  author  then  proceeds  to  explain 
his  method  for  actual  beginners  in  Homer ;  but  since 
his  method  is  in  keeping  with  the  one  just  outlined 
for  the  projected  books  in  Greek  and  Latin,  there  is 
no  need  of  enlarging  upon  it.  As  will  be  readily 
seen,  in  both  volumes  one  main  principle  is  the 
governing  conception:  the  business  of  education  is 
the  transmission  of  ideas.  Language  is  to  be  re- 
garded first  of  all  as  a  means  of  communication,  and 
not  as  an  end  in  itself. 

Finally  we  teachers  of  things  new  and  old  may 
bear  in  mind  that  we  are  in  a  world  where  reality  is 
permanent,  and  its  appearance  constantly  changing. 
We  must  therefore  be  inflexible  where  reality  is 
concerned,  and  flexible  when  change  becomes  neces- 
sary; for  we  may  properly  regard  ourselves  as  co- 
workers with  One  who  saith:  'Behold,  I  make  all 
things  new.' 

*  Andrew  Lang,  Essays  in  Little,  1912,  pp.  80-3. 


13 


XI 


THE  FUNCTION  OF  THE  LEADER 
IN  SCHOLARSHIP ' 

TO  the  restless  citizens  of  our  vast  American 
commonwealth,  the  precise  service  which  the 
scholar  renders  to  the  State  is  by  no  means  evident. 
In  time  of  peace,  a  democracy  is  more  apt  to  insist 
upon  the  rights  which  all  men  are  said  to  possess  in 
common  than  to  care  ahout  the  duties  which  the 
highly  gifted  and  specially  trained  may  be  thought 
to  owe  to  the  social  organism  as  a  whole. 

In  the  ancient  culture  which  grew  up  about  the 
eastern  half  of  the  Mediterranean,  and  from  which 
the  best  impulses  of  modern  civilization — nay  even 
of  modern  democracy — have  chiefly  sprung,  a  dif- 
ferent ideal  held  sway.  To  the  representative  think- 
ers of  antiquity,  special  gifts  and  special  training 
appeared,  one  may  say,  in  an  undemocratic  guise, 
the  emphasis  being  less  upon  the  rights  and  claims 
of  the  individual,  and  more  upon  his  higher  or  lower 
office  as  a  member  of  the  body  politic.  A  similar 
readiness  to  subject  the  interests  of  the  part  to  the 
welfare  of  the  whole  may  be  observed  in  the  Middle 
Ages,  that  is,  in  the  period  in  which  our  modem  na- 

*  An  address  delivered  before  the  Society  of  Phi  Beta  Kappa 
in  Cornell  University,  May  30,  1911;  first  issued  as  a  privately 
printed  pamphlet,  Ithaca,  New  York,  1911. 

182 


THE  STATE  AS  AN  ORGANISM  183 

tions  and  vernacular  literatures  took  their  immediate 
rise.  The  very  existence  of  feudalism,  and  the  funda- 
mental activities  of  the  mediaeval  Church,  alike  in- 
volved the  principle  of  spontaneous  subordination, 
and  made  comprehensible  the  idea  of  a  specific  disci- 
pline fitting  the  choicest  of  the  youth  of  each  gener- 
ation for  a  type  of  willing  service  which  amounted 
to  spiritual  leadership  in  the  State.  That  this  idea 
actually  was  familiar  to  the  ancients  is  sufficiently 
clear  to  any  one  who  has  dipped  into  Plato  or  Quin- 
tilian;  and  that  it  persisted  after  the  Middle  Ages 
to  the  time  of  Milton,  if  not  later,  may  be  gathered  by 
all  who  care  to  examine  his  cogent  tractate  Of  Edu- 
cation. Yet  the  traditional  human  belief  in  the  spe- 
cial obligations  of  special  classes  to  the  commonwealth 
may  be  more  satisfactorily  illustrated  than  by  ab- 
stract treatises;  and,  in  particular,  we  Americans 
need  to  have  brought  home  to  us  the  idea  of  a  defi- 
nite kind  of  person,  who,  though  in  the  fullest  sense 
a  member  of  the  social  organism,  and  actuated  by 
an  unusual  concern  for  its  welfare,  is  yet  a  free  and 
relatively  spontaneous  agent — like  the  eye  in  the 
head — one  whose  special  business  is  to  spy  out  and 
watch  over  those  eternal  forms  of  human  thought 
and  feeling,  of  truth  and  beauty,  in  which  the  real 
life  of  every  nation  is  manifested,  and  which  the  con- 
serving spirit  of  scholarship  hands  on  from  age  to 
age. 

For  a  better  grasp  of  the  relation  between  the  in- 
dividual and  the  State  we  may  turn  to  a  figure  of 
speech.      There   are,   indeed,    not  a   few   recurring 


184      THE  LEADER  IN  SOHOLAESHIP 

similes,  or  literary  comparisons,  which  seem  rather 
to  bear  the  stamp  of  a  universal  human  imagination 
than  to  be  the  work  of  any  particular  genius,  and  to 
have  a  greater  validity  for  our  thinking  (as  they 
have  had  a  greater  vitality)  than  any  scientific  or 
philosophical  abstractions.  Such  is  the  comparison 
of  the  State  to  a  ship,  with  all  her  tackling  perfect, 
and  every  mariner,  from  the  steersman  to  the  look- 
out, performing  his  office,  however  great  or  humble, 
as  needful  to  the  majestic  progress  of  the  whole. 
What  an  appeal  to  the  human  mind  has  this  figure 
not  made,  from  Sophocles  to  Horace,  and  from  Long- 
fellow to  Kipling!  But  of  a  greater  vitality  yet  is 
the  comparison  of  the  State  to  a  living  organism. 
It  is  imbedded  in  our  very  word  'corporation,'  and 
in  the  phrase  'the  body  politic'  In  Plato,  as  a  poem 
or  any  other  work  of  art  is  likened  in  its  form  and 
function  to  a  living  creature,  'having  a  body  of  its 
own  and  a  head  and  feet — there  should  be  a  middle, 
beginning,  and  end,  adapted  to  one  another  and  to 
the  whole, '  ^ — so  the  commonwealth,  which  is  also 
considered  a  work  of  conscious  art,  is  regarded  as  a 
being  possessed  of  organic  life.  Thus,  in  the  Apol- 
ogy, Socrates,  the  industrious  man  of  leisure — the 
scholar,  as  we  might  say, — speaks  of  the  city  of 
Athens  as  'a  great  and  noble  steed  who  is  tardy  in 
his  motions  owing  to  his  very  size,  and  requires  to 
be  stirred  into  life';  and  of  himself  as  a  dedicated 
agent  sent  to  arouse  this  animal  to  its  proper  activ- 

*  Plato,  Phcedrus.     See   The  Dialogues  of  Plato,  trans,  by 
Jowett,  1892,  1.  472-3. 


THE  BODY  AND  THE  MEMBERS  185 

ity,  which  is  the  contemplation  of  truth  and  beauty 
and  justice.  *I  am  that  gadfly,'  he  says,  'which  God 
has  attached  to  the  State,  and  all  day  long  and  in 
all  places  am  always  fastening  upon  you,  arousing 
and  persuading  and  reproaching  you.'^  Moreover, 
he  adds  that,  from  the  very  nature  of  his  calling,  it 
has  been  necessary  for  him  to  occupy  a  private  sta- 
tion, and  not  a  public  one,  and  to  deal  with  the  citi- 
zens in  smaller  groups,  or  as  individuals. 

Doubtless  most  of  us  are  acquainted  with  this 
comparison  of  organized  society  to  a  living  creature, 
not  in  Hobbes'  Leviathan,  or  in  Livy  or  Dionysius, 
but  in  the  first  scene  of  Coriolanus,  where  Shake- 
speare's fancy  has  played  with  the  fable  of  the  body 
and  the  members,  already  elaborated  in  Plutarch. 
We  may  slightly  abbreviate  the  dialogue  between 
Menenius  Agrippa,  senator  and  friend  of  Coriolanus, 
and  the  spokesman  of  the  clamorous  citizens  who 
are  suffering  in  the  famine: 

Menenius.    There  was  a  time  when  all  the  body's  mem- 
bers 
Rebelled  against  the  belly;  thus  accused  it: 
That  only  like  a  gulf  it  did  remain 
I'  the  midst  o'  the  body,  idle  and  unactive, 
Still  cupboarding  the  viand,  never  bearing 
Like  labor  with  the  rest,  where  the  other  instruments 
Did  see  and  hear,  devise,  instruct,  walk,  feel, 
And,  mutually  participate,  did  minister 
Unto  the  appetite  and  affection  common 
Of  the  whole  body.  .  .  . 

With  a  kind  of  smile, 

1  Plato,  Apology.    Hid.  2,  124-5. 


186      THE  LEADEE  IN  SOEOLAESHIP 

Whicli  ne'er  came  from  tlie  lungs,  but  even  thus — 
For,  look  you,  I  may  make  the  belly  smile 
As  well  as  speak — it  tauntingly  replied  .  .  . 

First  Citizen.  Your  belly's  answer?    What! 

The  kingly  crowned  head,  the  vigilant  eye, 
The  counsellor  heart,  the  arm  our  soldier, 
Our  steed  the  leg,  the  tongue  our  trumpeter. 
With  other  mimiments  and  petty  helps 
In  this  our  fabric,  if  that  they  .  .  . 
Should  by  the  cormorant  belly  be  restrained. 
Who  is  the  sink  o'  the  body  .  .  . 
What  could  the  belly  answer?  .  .  . 

Menenius.  Note  me  this,  good  friend; 

Your  most  grave  belly  was  deliberate, 
Not  rash  like  his  accusers,  and  thus  answered: 

*  True  is  it,  my  incorporate  friends,'  quoth  he, 

*  That  I  receive  the  general  food  at  first. 
Which  you  do  live  upon;  and  fit  it  is; 
Because  I  am  the  store-house  and  the  shop 
Of  the  whole  body:  but  if  you  do  remember, 
I  send  it  through  the  rivers  of  your  blood. 

Even  to  the  court,  the  heart,  to  the  seat  o'  the  brain ; 

And,  through  the  cranks  and  offices  of  man. 

The  strongest  nerves  and  small  inferior  veins 

From  me  receive  that  natural  competency 

Whereby  they  live.'  .  .  . 

The  senators  of  Eome  are  this  good  belly. 

And  you  tlie  mutinous  members.  .  .  . 

What  do  you  think, 
You,  the  great  toe  of  this  assembly  ?  ^ 

It  has  been  said  that  Saint  Paul  had  the  same 
original  story  in  mind  when  he  wrote  of  another  sort 

1  Coriolanus  1.  1,  95-156. 


THE  BODY  AND  THE  MEMBERS  187 

of  political  economy,  and  a  higher  kind  of  distribu- 
tion : 

'Now  concerning  spiritual  gifts,  brethren,  I  would 
not  have  you  ignorant.  .  .  .  Now  there  are  diversities 
of  gifts,  but  the  same  Spirit.  .  .  .  For  the  body  is 
not  one  member,  but  many.  ...  If  the  whole  body 
were  an  eye,  where  were  the  hearing?  If  the  whole 
were  hearing,  where  were  the  smelling?  .  .  .  But 
now  are  they  many  members,  yet  but  one  body.  And 
the  eye  cannot  say  unto  the  hand,  I  have  no  need  of 
thee:  nor  again  the  head  to  the  feet,  I  have  no  need 
of  you.  .  .  .  And  whether  one  member  suffer,  all  the 
members  suffer  with  it.  .  .  .  Now  ye  are  the  body  of 
Christ,  and  members  in  particular.  .  .  .  Are  all  apos- 
tles? are  all  prophets?  are  all  teachers?  .  .  .  But 
covet  earnestly  the  best  gifts. '  ^ 

Saint  Paul's  application  of  the  fable  is  doubtless 
the  most  familiar  case  of  all;  possibly  there  is  no 
instance  in  literature  of  a  figure  which  has  taken  a 
more  vital  hold  upon  the  imagination  of  mankind. 
Yet,  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  the  notion  of  corporate 
service  as  expressed  in  the  organic  comparison  has 
never  been  so  frequently  employed  as  toward  the  end 
of  the  Middle  Ages  by  certain  political  theorists, 
who  enlarged  upon  it  with  an  ingenuity  almost  more 
than  Shakespearean.  To  take  an  example  from  John 
of  Salisbury,  who  is  typical: 

'  The  servants  of  Religion  are  the  Soul  of  the  Body, 
and  therefore  have  principatum  t otitis  corporis;  the 

*  I  Cor.  12.  Cf .  Matt.  5.  29-30 ;  and  6.  22-3 :  '  The  light  of 
the  body  is  the  eye.  If,  therefore,  thine  eye  be  single,  thy  whole 
body  shall  be  fuU  of  light.  But  if  thine  eye  be  evil,  thy  whole 
body  shall  be  full  of  darkness.  If,  therefore,  the  light  that  is  in 
thee  be  darkness,  how  great  is  that  darkness. ' 


188       THE  LEADEE  IN  SCHOLAESHIP 

prince  is  the  head,  the  senate  the  heart,  the  court 
the  sides;  officers  and  judges  are  the  eyes,  ears,  and 
tongue ;  the  executive  officials  are  the  unarmed,  and 
the  army  is  the  armed  hand;  the  financial  depart- 
ment is  belly  and  intestines;  landfolk,  handicrafts- 
men, and  the  like  are  the  feet,  so  that  the  State 
exceeds  the  centipede  numerositate  pedum;  the  pro- 
tection of  the  folk  is  the  shoeing ;  the  distress  of  these 
feet  is  the  State's  gout.'^ 

An  earlier  writer  says  that  the  illustrious  men  of  a 
community  are  quasi  oculi.^  One  might  speculate  how 
some  later  dramatist,  fastening  upon  this  novel  con- 
ceit, would  represent  a  mutiny  in  which  the  sinewy 
leg  of  athletic  prowess  and  the  trumpeting  tongue  of 
collegiate  advertisement  denied  the  paramount  services 
rendered  by  the  vigilant  eye  of  pure  scholarship.  Or 
suppose  that  the  belly  of  the  State  refused  to  nourish 
the  optic  nerve — where  were  the  seeing  ? 

I  have  dwelt  at  some  length  upon  this  notion,  be- 
cause the  truth  which  it  envelops  is  not  al'ways  real- 
ized at  first  glance,  and  because  it  must  be  realized 
before  we  can  grasp  the  function  of  the  leader  of 
scholarship  in  the  State,  whose  gifts  we  should  earn- 
estly covet.  Upon  reflection,  it  seems  to  me  that  the 
scholar,  properly  considered,  must  be  taken  to  repre- 
sent the  eye  of  the  State,  and  that  the  class  to  which 
he  belongs  must  include  all  persons  who  are  living  the 
life  of  contemplation.  In  accordance  with  the  mean- 
ing of  the  Greek  termo-xoXi^'  (leisure),  which  reappears 

*  Gierke-Maitland,  Political  Theories  of  the  Middle  Age,  pp. 
131-2. 
Ubid.,  Tp.  132. 


CAEE  OF  THE  STATE'S  EYES  189 

in  our  English  words  'school'  and  'scholarship,'  the 
life  of  studious  contemplation,  which  is  the  highest 
function  of  the  body  politic,  is  secured  to  the  common- 
wealth by  the  release  of  the  eminently  gifted  from  the 
anxieties  of  the  practical  life,  so  that  they  may  per- 
form the  most  important  service  of  all  with  the  utmost 
measure  of  efficiency.  These  are  the  persons  who,  as 
Plato  suggests,  'have  never  had  the  wit  to  be  idle,'  yet 
have  been  'earelesis  of  what  the  many  care  for — wealth, 
and  family  interests,  and  military  offices,  and  speak- 
ing in  the  assembly,  and  magistracies,  and  plots,  and 
parties. '  ^  That  is  the  best-ordered  state  which  makes 
the  fullest  provision  for  them,  and  renders  them  most 
free  from  paltry  considerations.  If  they  are  forced  to 
take  anxious  thought  for  the  morrow,  how  shall  they 
perform  their  duty  toward  the  other  classes  in  society? 
They  must  be  as  free  from  care  about  their  raiment 
as  the  lilies  of  the  field.  Where  there  is  no  leisure, 
there  is  no  vision;  and  where  there  is  no  vision,  the 
commonwealth  languishes :  the  whole  head  is  sick,  and 
the  whole  heart  faint.  Shall  the  huge  belly  and  intes- 
tines of  Leviathan,  I  mean  the  enormous  wealth  of 
our  nation,  say  to  its  eye,  the  scholar — for  example, 
to  the  student  of  Greek  or  of  mediEeval  literature :  We 
live  to  eat,  we  are  a  sink  and  a  sewer,  and  have  no  need 
of  you  ? 

And  yet,  whatever  kind  of  smile  our  most  grave  men 
of  wealth  occasionally  bestow  upon  pure  scholarship, 
it  cannot  truthfully  be  said  that  we  treat  our  scholars 
well  in  comparison  with  a  great  European  nation  like 

*  Apology.    Dialogues,  trans,  by  Jowett,  2.  129. 


190       THE  LEADER  IN  SOHOLAESHIP 

France,  or  even  a  small  one  like  Denmark.  Hospitals 
for  the  ailing  body ;  schools  of  applied  science ;  even 
departments  of  pure  science  that  stand  in  an  obvious 
relation  to  what  is  called  practical  life;  everything 
that  concerns  food,  drink,  shelter,  and  bodily  health, 
and  the  means  of  rapid  transportation,  and  the  dis- 
ciplines which  tend  to  multiply  and  distribute  such 
blessings — for  all  these  things  our  men  of  great  out- 
ward fortune  understand  how  to  give  generously.  I 
am  far  from  belittling  such  gifts.  But  they  are  not 
of  the  sort  which  our  leaders  in  education  should  earn- 
estly covet,  so  long  as  the  tide  violently  sets  away  from 
the  theoretical  life  to  the  practical.  Great  engineers 
know  how  to  control  the  tide  when  it  comes  rushing 
into  their  canals;  but  the  children  of  this  world  are 
in  their  generation  wiser  than  the  children  of  light. 

It  will  be  noticed  that  by  implication  the  scholar  has 
been  set  in  a  class  with  the  philosopher,  the  painter, 
the  poet,  and  all  other  men  distinguished  for  their 
powers  of  vision,  who  see  life  steadily,  and  see  it  whole. 
Any  failure  to  recognize  the  tie  between  the  ideal 
student  and  the  brotherhood  of  seers  and  artists  would, 
indeed,  be  injurious  to  the  entire  fraternity  of  intel- 
lectual men.  Nay  more,  I  am  persuaded  that  no  vul- 
gar error  of  the  belly  and  the  big  toe  is  so  inimical  to 
the  arts  of  civilization  as  that  by  which  scholarship 
is  falsely  identified  with  industrious  pedantry,  and 
poetic  and  philosophic  insight  with  one  or  another 
sort  of  lazy  mooning ;  as  if  the  scholar  and  the  poet 
were  each  endowed  with  his  own  kind  of  retina,  and 
the  impressions  of  the  one  were  necessarily  at  variance 


DEFECTIVE  VISION  191 

with  those  of  the  other,  as  well  as  with  the  exeellent 
vision  of  the  man  in  the  street.  If  this  mistaken  view 
is  prevalent  in  America,  and  is  shared  by  many  who 
lay  claim  to  refinement,  we  mi^t  grant  that  the  eye 
of  our  nation  is  not  single,  and  that  the  body  of  the 
commonwealth  therefore  cannot  be  full  of  light — or  at 
least  that  our  country  is  suffering  from  strabismus, 
without  knowing  that  it  is  a  serious  visual  defect. 
There  is,  of  course,  a  blindness  that  will  not  see  the 
relation  between  the  best  theory  and  the  best  practice, 
but  this  infirmity  is  not  to  be  discovered  in  those  ex- 
cellent men  of  business,  Shakespeare  and  Goethe ;  or 
in  the  scholar-poets,  Virgil,  Dante,  Chaucer,  and  Spen- 
ser; or  in  Milton,  who  took  'intense  labor  and  study' 
to  be  his  portion  in  this  life.  Nor  was  our  own  Profes- 
sor Longfellow  thus  afflicted. 

'0  thou  poor  authorling!'  he  cries,  'to  cheer  thy 
solitary  labor,  remember  that  the  secret  studies  of  an 
author  are  the  sunken  piers  upon  which  is  to  rest 
the  bridge  of  his  fame,  spanning  the  dark  waters  of 
oblivion.  They  are  out  of  sight ;  but  without  them  no 
superstructure  can  stand  secure. '  ^ 

The  truth  is,  as  poets  like  Longfellow  would  admit, 
that  we  Americans  are  not  over-friendly  to  secret 
studies  and  deep  researches  that  concern  the  distant 
future  rather  than  the  passing  moment ;  and  doubtless 
we  are  too  fond  of  calling  ourselves  a  '  practical '  folk, 
without  considering  what  the  expression  may  involve. 
By  'practical'  do  we  mean  anything  more  than  physi- 
cally wide-awake  and  dexterous?     Do  we  mean,  for 

*  Longfellow,  Hyperion,  Book  4,  chap.  1. 


192      THE  LEADER  IN  SOHOLAESHIP 

example,  that,  being  less  artistic  than  the  Dutch,  we 
are  more  successful  than  they  in  the  planning  of  muni- 
cipal affairs  ?>  Who  that  knows  will  say  so  ?  And  do 
we,  with  far-sighted  patriotism,  render  to  our  national 
government  exactly  what  is  due  to  Caesar  ?  Or  do  we 
render  more,  or  less?  Which  of  the  alternatives  is 
'  practical '  ?  On  the  other  hand,  if  we  think  it  is  the 
divine  purpose  that  any  generation  should  eat,  walk, 
build  a  house,  pay  taxes,  and  go  to  the  grave,  without 
trying  to  realize  the  highest  ideal  of  the  human  race, 
then  we  are  a  very  unpractical  folk  indeed.  Nor  are 
we  to  be  deemed  crafty  when  we  try  to  ease  our  con- 
sciences with  an  empty  platitude.  If  this  be  simply 
an  age  of  industrial  growth — mere  larding  of  the  belly 
— and  if,  sooner  or  later,  it  must  be  followed  by  an 
age  of  spiritual  reintegration  and  exalted  national 
life,  neither  fate  nor  the  many-headed  multitude  will 
bring  about  the  change,  but  the  eye  of  Providence 
gleaming  in  the  visionary  eye  of  the  poet,  priest,  and 
scholar.  Gold  and  silver  breed  gold  and  silver,  Shy- 
lock  observed,  as  fast  as  ewes  and  rams;  they  do  not 
breed  spirit  at  all.  And  bulls  and  bears  breed  bulls 
and  bears,  not  scholars.  It  is  not  shrewd  to  think  that 
human  life  can  gather  figs  of  thistles.  The  most  prac- 
tical generation  is  that  which,  giving  Cjesar  his  due, 
still  gives  precedence  to  the  higher  or  theoretic  life, 
the  life,  not  of  the  foot  or  belly,  but  of  the  head  and 
eye.  Speaking  of  the  relation  between  theory  and 
practice  in  Greek  life,  Professor  Bosanquet  asks : 

'How  is  this  glorification  of  theoriu  to  be  recon- 
ciled with  what  we  take  to  be  the  needs  of  praeti- 


EFFECTUAL  VISION  I93 

cal  life,  and  the  necessity  that  education  should  pre- 
pare us  for  it?  .  .  .  Let  us  understand  distinctly  of 
what  we  are  speaking.  Theoria  for  a  Greek  is  not 
what  we  mean  by  theory;  and  the  theoretic  life  is 
not  what  we  call  a  theoretical  pursuit.  Theory  for 
us  comes  near  to  an  intellectual  fiction;  a  way  of 
grasping  and  comprehending  a  complex  of  observa- 
tions. .  .  .  Theoretical  considerations  for  us  mean 
mostly  what  is  abstract  and  hypothetical;  **if  this 
change,  then  that  consequence."  Theoretic  life  for 
the  Greek  meant  the  life  of  insight,  a  man's  hold  and 
grasp  of  the  central  realities  of  what  is  most  valu- 
able and  most  divine,  and  therefore  also  most  human. '  ^ 

Now  it  is  to  the  attainment  of  this  insight,  and  to 
the  habitual  diffusion  of  it  throughout  the  State, 
that  the  long,  laborious  quest  of  the  scholar  must 
conduct  him,  if  his  efforts  are  not  to  be  in  vain. 
For  him,  as  for  all  other  children  of  Adam,  the 
primal  curse  must  be  transmuted  into  the  ultimate 
blessing  through  the  steady  employment  of  his  own 
proper  energy  in  the  accomplishment  of  a  desired 
end.  He  has  details  to  learn  and  manipulate,  as 
have  the  farmer  and  the  financier.  His  province 
being  knowledge,  not  vague  and  ill-defined,  but  ex- 
act as  well  as  comprehensive,  it  is  his  function  in 
society  to  be  always  learning,  which  means  contem- 
plating, and  not  in  a  haphazard  way,  but  with  a  pur- 
pose, and  according  to  the  most  efficacious  methods 
that  have  been,  or  can  be,  discovered.  The  best 
scholar,  serving  his  country  to  the  utmost,  may  be 

*  Bosanquet,  The  Place  of  Leisure  in  Life,  in  the  International 
Journal  of  Ethics,  Jan.,  1911,  p.  163. 


194  THE  LEADER  IN  SOHOLAESHIP 

defined  as  the  best  man  studying  the  best  things  in 
the  best  way;  and  whatever  else  the  best  way  may 
imply,  it  means  first  of  all  a  thorough  and  orderly 
procedure.  If  he  is  to  render  an  individual  service 
to  the  State,  the  scholar,  at  the  least,  is  bound  to 
know  some  one  thing,  or  some  aspect  of  it,  better 
than  any  one  else,  and  must  be  able  to  communicate 
a  part  of  the  insight  which  this  knowledge  gives  him. 
And  he  must  continue  learning  and  communicating 
throughout  his  life.  The  moment  he  ceases  to  learn, 
he  ceases  to  be  a  scholar;  his  essential  service  to  the 
State  begins  to  flag — and  his  own  self-respect  to  ebb 
away. 

It  foUows  that  no  one  who  is  not  a  scholar  can  be 
a  teacher,  and,  other  things  being  equal,  the  better 
scholar  he  is,  the  better  teacher  will  he  be;  and  the 
more  productive  he  is  in  the  normal  way  of  pub- 
lished studies,  the  more  refreshing  will  his  person- 
ality become  to  his  thirsty  students.  It  is  better  to 
drink  of  a  flowing  brook  than  from  a  stagnant  pool; 
and  the  doctrine  of  faith  without  works  has  no  last- 
ing appeal  to  a  healthy  mind.  I  know  that  the  belly 
and  the  big  toe  and  the  blind  mouth,  who  sometimes 
pretend  to  teach,  make  uncouth  signs  and  sounds  to 
the  effect  that  the  effluence  of  the  disciplined  eye  is 
not  essential.  But  as  Ben  Jonson  says,  to  judge  of 
poets  is  only  the  faculty  of  poets ;  ^  and  similarly 
we  may  say  here:  to  judge  of  scholars  is  only  the 
faculty  of  scholars.  As  no  one  dare  affirm  that  the 
ideal  will  not  work  until  he  has  tried  it,  being  con- 

*  Discoveries,  ed.  by  Castelain,  p.  130. 


ONLY  SCHOLAES  SHOULD  TEACH      195 

vinced  that  what  he  has  tried  is  ideal,  so  no  one  can 
estimate  the  influence  of  scholarship  upon  teaching, 
who  does  not  repeatedly,  and  for  the  sheer  love  of 
it,  bring  his  own  studies  to  a  successful  issue.  *  Great 
undteiTStandings, '  says  Jonson,  sometimes  'will  rather 
choose  to  die  than  not  to  know  the  things  they  study 
for.  Think  then  what  an  evil  [ignorance]  is,  and 
what  good  the  contrary. '  ^  Now  who  ever  heard  of 
the  belly  or  the  big  toe  preferring  death  to  igno- 
rance? It  is  the  eye  alone  that  pines  away  in  the 
dark.  To  the  busily  idle  in  our  universities,  how- 
ever, Jonson  may  seem  to  furnish  only  a  broad  and 
inconclusive  rejoinder;  for  varied  and  slippery  are 
the  arguments  against  intense  labor  and  study  which 
the  unscholarly  invent  in  order  to  save  themselves 
from  a  confession  of  indolence,  or  to  put  away  the 
thought  of  their  unfitness  for  the  scholarly  positions 
into  which  they  have  intruded.  But  if  a  specific  in- 
stance is  needed  of  a  man  who  was  a  great  teacher 
because  he  was  a  great  and  tasteful  scholar,  we  may 
take  the  Latinist  who  taught  the  foremost  popular- 
izer  of  classical  literature  in  our  day.  Says  An- 
drew Lang: 

*It  was  extraordinary  to  see  the  advance  which  all 
who  cared  to  work  made  under  Mr.  Sellar's  instruc- 
tions; .  .  .  the  stimulus  of  competition  was  needless 
to  all  who  were  able  to  feel  the  inspiration  of  [his] 
educational  influence.  It  is  not  easy  for  his  bio- 
grapher to  refrain  from  saying  that,  having  come 
to  St.  Andrews  with  no  purpose  of  working,  he  left  it 
in  another  mind,  and  that  to  Mr.  Sellar  he  owes  the 

» Ibid.,  p.  43. 


196  THE  LEADER  IN  SCHOLARSHIP 

impulse  to  busy  himself  with  letters.  ...  No  less 
important  than  his  work  as  an  author,  important  as 
that  is,  was  his  example  as  a  scholar,  and  as  a  man ; 
his  loyal,  honorable,  simple,  and  generous  life.  .  .  . 
He  loved  his  studies  entirely  for  their  own  sake;  he 
dwelt  with  the  great  of  old  because  he  enjoyed  their 
company. '  ^ 

We  must  allow,  then,  that  good  fellowship,  easy 
manners,  and  a  knowing  way  with  the  crowd,  or  the 
eloquence  that  often  attends  mere  bodily  vigor  and 
lively  spirits,  cannot  make  an  ideal  teacher  of  one 
who  lacks  the  habitual  impulse  to  acquire  sound 
learning,  or  to  submit  the  results  of  his  labor  openly 
to  the  judgment  and  for  the  benefit  of  his  peers. 
On  the  other  hand,  when  scholarship  is  rare,  it  is  a 
mistake  for  those  who  have  the  prime  requisite,  and 
have  also  the  necessary  tact,  to  shirk  the  responsibil- 
ity, and  forego  the  personal  advantages,  of  instruct- 
ing in  class.  Not  that  there  should  be  too  heavy  a 
burden.  The  balance  should  always  be  in  favor  of 
less  rather  than  more  teaching;  for  even  a  little, 
artistically  done,  is  good  for  the  State,  whereas  over- 
much, perfunctorily  and  wearily,  or  jauntily  and 
carelessly,  gone  through  with,  is  worse  than  useless. 
In  after-life  most  students  very  properly  recall  the 
benefits  they  once  received  from  capable  teaching; 
yet  there  is  an  account  to  be  revealed  at  the  Last 
Judgment  of  the  injury  wrought  by  instruction 
which  had  a  name  that  it  was  alive,  but  was  dead. 
With  the  proper  amount  of  teaching — not  more  than 

1  Memoir  of  TV.  Y.  Seller,  in  Sellar's  The  Roman  Poets  of  tJie 
Augusta/n  Age,  Horace  and  the  Elegiac  Poets,  pp.  xxxi-xxxv. 


FICHTE  AT  BERLIN  I97 

eight  or  ten  hours  a  week — the  scholar  is  of  all  the 
more  worth  to  his  university  and  to  the  State,  not 
only  because  he  thereby  multiplies  his  personal  in- 
fluence, sending  out  others  of  his  sort  into  the  com- 
munal life,  but  because  the  contact  with  young  and 
growing  minds  is  salutary  to  the  spirit  of  the  learned. 
The  teacher  must  be  singularly  dense  who  cannot 
profit  by  an  exchange  of  ideas  with  the  pupils  whom 
he  has  the  opportunity  of  training.  But,  whether 
for  his  own  sake  or  for  that  of  the  younger  genera- 
tion, we  may  look  with  distrust  upon  the  man  who 
attempts  to  separate  teaching  from  scholarship,  or 
scholarship  from  teaching,  save  when  some  infirmity 
of  temper,  or  ineradicable  defect  of  manner,  renders 
the  presence  of  an  individual  scholar  useless  as  well 
as  unpleasant  in  class.  However,  we  are  dealing, 
not  with  the  exceptional  case,  but  with  the  typical, 
and  with  what  every  one  should  desire  in  a  leader. 
All  true  scholars,  being  orderly  learners,  are 
organizers  of  knowledge,  and  of  the  means  of  attain- 
ing it,  and  hence  possess  to  some  degree  the  essential 
power  of  leadership  in  organizing  instruction.  The 
case  of  Fichte  is  an  illustration.  According  to  his 
biographer,  when  the  peace  of  1807  was  concluded, 
among  the  first  means  to  be  suggested  for  restoring 
the  political  welfare  of  Prussia  was  the  establish- 
ment of  the  University  of  Berlin,  'from  which,  as 
from  the  spiritual  heart  of  the  community,  a  cur- 
rent of  life  and  energy  might  be  poured  forth 
through  all  its  members.'  Fichte  being  chosen  as 
the  man  before  all  others  fitted  for  the  task,  'un- 
limited power  was  given  him  to  frame  for  the  new 
14 


198       THE  LEADER  IN  SCHOLARSHIP 

tmiversity  a  constitution  which  should  insure  its 
efficiency  and  success.'  He  already  had  set  forth 
his  ideals  of  education  in  an  impressive  course  of 
lectures  at  Erlangen,  where  he  had  discussed  such 
topics  as  these:  'Of  Integrity  in  Study';  'Of  the 
Progressive  Scholar';  'Of  the  Finished  Scholar'; 
'Of  the  Scholar  as  Teacher';  'Of  the  Scholar  as 
Kuler.'  He  entered  upon  his  new  undertaking  with 
ardor. 

'And  towards  the  end  of  1807  his  plan  was  com- 
pleted. ...  Its  chief  feature  was  perfect  unity  of  pur- 
pose, complete  subordination  of  every  branch  of  in- 
struction to  the  one  great  object  of  all  teaching — not 
the  inculcation  of  opinion,  but  the  spiritual  culture 
and  elevation  of  the  student.  The  institution  was  to 
be  an  organic  whole — an  assemblage,  not  of  mere 
teachers  holding  various  and  perhaps  opposite  views, 
and  living  only  to  disseminate  these,  but  of  men  ani- 
mated by  a  common  purpose,  and  steadily  pursuing 
one  recognized  object.  The  office  of  the  professor 
was  not  to  repeat  verbally  what  already  stood 
printed  in  books,  and  might  be  found  there;  but  to 
exercise  a  diligent  supervision  over  the  studies  of  the 
pupil,  and  to  see  that  he  fully  acquired  by  his  own 
effort,  as  a  personal  and  independent  possession,  the 
branch  of  knowledge  which  was  the  object  of  his 
studies.  It  was  thus  a  school  for  the  scientific  use 
of  the  understanding,  in  which  positive  or  historical 
knowledge  was  to  be  looked  upon  only  as  a  vehicle 
of  instruction,  not  as  an  ultimate  end.  Spiritual 
independence,  intellectual  strength,  moral  dignity — 
these  were  the  great  ends  to  the  attainment  of  which 
everything  else  was  but  the  instrument.'^ 

*  The  Popular  WorTcs  of  Fichie,  trans,  by  William  Smith, 
fourth  edition,  1.  126-8. 


THE  MEDIEVAL  USE  OF  LEISURE  199 

Now  I  submit  that  this  ideal  of  Fichte,  who  was  a 
student  of  Dante  as  well  as  a  'post-Kantian'  phi- 
losopher, is  in  its  essence  an  ideal  of  the  organic 
scholarly  spirit  of  the  Middle  Ages;  and  that  none 
but  a  student  of  Dante  and  the  Middle  Ages  can  say, 
and  few  actually  are  aware,  to  what  extent  univer- 
sity education  in  modern  times  is  indebted,  through 
Fichte,  to  the  theory  of  culture  which  is  often  mis- 
takenly condemned  under  the  name  of  Scholasti- 
cism. 'Scholasticism'  is  a  forbidding  word  when 
people  have  not  Greek  enough  to  apprehend  the 
significance  of  ax^X-^-  The  thirteenth  century,  the 
Middle  Ages,  had  at  least  enough  for  that.  To  them, 
not  less  than  to  Plato  and  Aristotle,  do  we  owe  such 
notions  as  still  persist  of  an  organic  unity  in  studies, 
of  the  superiority  of  the  life  of  contemplation,  and 
of  a  leisure  which  has  not  the  wit  to  be  idle.  In  a 
State,  as  in  a  university,  the  level  of  civilization 
may  be  accurately  gauged  by  the  way  in  which  *  edu- 
cated' persons  use  their  leisure,  and  the  ideal  that 
is  entertained  concerning  womanhood.  Too  many 
of  our  persons  of  leisure,  a  class  that  has  been  cre- 
ated by  our  enormous  material  wealth,  have  just  wit 
enough  to  spend  their  time  reclining  in  motor-cars 
or  on  the  decks  of  luxurious  private  yachts.  If  we 
seek  evidence  of  our  reverence  for  women,  our  Par- 
thenon is  yet  to  build,  and  we  repudiate  the  spirit 
exemplified  in  Notre-Damc  de  Chartres.  On  occa- 
sion, however,  we  bow  down  to  brick  and  stone, 
when  the  chance  offers  for  the  erection  of  a  costly 
university  building,  while  humane  scholarship  and 


200  THE  LEADEE  IN  SCHOLAESHIP 

the  true  means  to  the  organization  of  learning — ^that  is, 
scholars — are  left  unprovided. 

Different  sight 
Those  venerable  Doctors  saw  of  old,  .  .  . 
When,  in  forlorn  and  naked  chambers  cooped 
And  crowded,  o'er  the  ponderous  books  they  hung 
Like  caterpillars  eating  out  their  way 
In  silence,  or  with  keen  devouring  noise 
Not  to  be  tracked  or  fathered.     Princes  then 
At  matins  froze,  and  couched  at  curfew-time, 
Trained  up  through  piety  and  zeal  to  prize 
Spare  diet,  patient  labor,  and  plain  weeds.^ 

In  its  later  actual  embodiment,  the  vision  of  Fichte 
was  modified  in  part  by  that  of  Schleiermacher,  a 
Platonist,  and  Wilhelm  von  Humboldt,  who  is  said  to 
have  refrained  from  composing  his  memoirs',  in  order 
to  save  time  for  the  study  of  the  classics.  These  ex- 
amples of  scholarly  organizers  are  typical,  if  any- 
thing is;  so  is  the  instance  of  Madvig,  minister  of 
instruction  in  Denmark ;  so  is  that  of  any  one  of  the 
great  scholars,  Members  of  the  Academy  and  profes- 
sors in  the  College  de  France,  who,  during  the  last 
fifty  years,  have  directed  the  growth  of  education  in 
Paris.  With  these  patterns  before  us,  how  come  we  in 
America  to  believe  that  we  may  entrust  the  organi- 
zation of  our  schools  and  colleges  to  men  who  have 
not  engaged  in  research,  or  in  any  way  contributed  to 
the  advancement  of  learning,  or  to  men  who,  when 
once  they  begin  to  multiply  the  formal  devices  of 
administration,  give  up  the  contemplative  life,  and 

» Wordsworth,  Prelude  3.  446-457. 


SCHOLARS  AS  ORGANIZERS  201 

therewith  their  function  of  real  scholarly  leadership, 
making  friends  with  Mammon  in  order  to  secure  for 
their  institutions  the  things  that  are  Caesar's?  There 
are,  and  have  been,  notable  exceptions.  Woolsey  at 
Yale  was  one,  nor  did  Mammon  treat  him  the  worse 
for  being  an  able  scholar  and  teacher ;  and  it  is  easy 
to  think  of  other  examples,  searching  candles,  divine 
lamps  to  all  the  inward  parts  of  Leviathan.  History 
shows  that  the  real  leaders  in  education  are  those  who 
continually  see  to  it  that  the  kingdom  of  scholarship 
is  within  them. 

What  now,  still  more  definitely,  is  the  function  of 
the  true  leader  of  scholarship,  as  opposed  to  the  osten- 
sible ?  His  office  will  be  made  clear  through  a  restate- 
ment of  the  positions  we  have  reached,  if  we  include 
with  these  several  other  obvious  truths,  and  illustrate 
here  and  there  from  the  lives  and  opinions  of  some 
of  the  most  eminent  leaders  themselves.  The  illustra- 
tions are  mainly  drawn  from  the  domain  of  classical 
and  mediaeval  learning,  and  not  from  that  of  physical 
science,  though  the  life  of  contemplation  may  be  led 
there  also.  But  the  overbalance  of  attention  which 
physical,  biological,  and  economic  science  has  chanced 
to  obtain  from  the  last  six  or  seven  generations  should 
incline  us  to  lay  all  the  more  stress  upon  those  dis- 
ciplines which  immediately  concern  the  spirit  of  man, 
and  which  we  directly  associate  with  the  term  'human- 
ities. '  If  we  may  judge  from  the  custom  of  language, 
the  organizer  of  humane  studies,  especially  the  study 
of  the  most  original  literatures,  will  be  one  of  the 
chief  leaders  of  men,  and  chief  contributors  to  a  more 
abundant  human  life.    Vita  sine  litteris  est  mors. 


202  THE  LEADER  IN  SCHOLARSHIP 

The  leader  of  scholarship  must  be  a  scholar,  as  the 
leader  of  an  army  must  be  a  soldier,  first,  last,  and 
always.  Though  it  is  necessary  for  him  to  understand 
the  functions  of  other  classes,  and  though  the  head  of 
the  State  cannot  say  to  him,  '  I  have  no  need  of  you, '  ^ 
he  will  not  relinquish  the  fundamental  duties  of  his 
own  primary  office,  except  in  dire  emergency.  When 
William  the  Third  summoned  his  people  to  withstand 
Napoleon  in  1812,  the  professors  of  the  new  University 
of  Berlin  did  not  lag  behind,  says  Hoffmann,  in  his  life 
of  the  Hellenist,  August  Boeckh.  Fichte  and  Schleier- 
macher  bore  arms  in  the  ranks,  and  Boeckh  had  com- 
mand of  a  company.^  This  experience  as  soldier  is  but 
an  episode,  however,  in  the  record  of  the  great  cap- 
tain of  Hellenic  studies,  who  was  perhaps,  all  things 

'  Compare  Wordsworth,  Monies  and  Schoolmen  (^Ecclesiastical 
Sonnets  2.  5) : 

Record  we  too,  with  just  and  faithful  pen. 
That  many  hooded  cenobites  there  are. 
Who  in  their  private  cells  have  yet  a  care 
Of  public  quiet;  unambitious  men. 
Counsellors  for  the  world,  of  pierciug  ken ; 
Whose  fervent  exhortations  from  afar 
Move  princes  to  their  duty,  peace  or  war ; 
And  oft-times  in  .the  most  forbidding  den 
Of  solitude,  with  love  of  science  strong. 
How  patiently  the  yoke  of  thought  they  bear! 
How  subtly  glide  its  finest  threads  along ! 
Spirits  that  crowd  the  intellectual  sphere 
With  mazy  boundaries,  as  the  astronomer 
With  orb  and  cycle  girds  the  starry  throng. 

'  Hoffmann,  August  Boeclch,  1901,  p.  28. 


FICHTE    AT    ERLANGEN  203 

considered,  the  greatest  organizer  of  scholarship  in 
modern  times,  and  who,  toward  the  end  of  a  career  of 
quiet  yet  well-nigh  incredible  productivity  as  a  writer 
and  teacher,  still  described  his  proper  motion  in  the 

words  of  Solon  :Trjpa.(TK<i)  alel  ttoXXo.  StSao-KO/ievos — *I  grOW 

old  ever  learning  many  things. ' 

The  leader,  having  served  his  apprenticeship,  will 
be  able  to  distinguish  his  younger  fellow-scholars  when 
he  sees  them.  He  must  be  able  to  tell  gold  from  brass 
and  pinchbeck.  And  he  will  not  encourage  the  un- 
scholarly  in  the  profession  of  teaching. 

Though  scholarship  must  concern  itself  with  details, 
and  can  never  forego  this  concern,  its  final  purpose 
is  the  establishment  of  general  truths  as  a  basis  for 
thought  and  action.  Attend  to  the  incomparable 
Fichte,  as  he  addresses  his  students  at  Erlangen,  with 
a  bitter  experience  at  Jena  fresh  in  his  mind : 

'  I  am  a  Priest  of  Truth ;  I  am  in  her  pay ;  I  have 
bound  myself  to  do  all  things,  to  venture  all  things, 
to  suffer  all  things'  for  her.  If  I  should  be  persecuted 
and  hated  for  her  sake,  if  I  should  even  meet  death 
in  her  service,  what  wonderful  thing  is  it  I  shall  have 
done  ? — what  but  that  which  I  clearly  ought  to  do  ? ' 

*I  know,'  he  continues,  'that  an  effeminate  and 
nerveless  generation  will  tolerate  neither  these  feelings 
nor  the  expression  of  them ;  .  .  .  but  I  know  too  where 
I  speak.  I  speak  before  young  men  who  are  at  pres- 
ent secured  by  their  youth  against  this  utter  enerva- 
tion. ...  I  avow  it  freely,  that  from  the  point  on 
which  Providence  has  placed  me,  I  too  would  willingly 
contribute  something  to  extend  in  every  direction,  as 
far  as  my  native  tongue  can  reach,  and  farther  if  pos- 


204  THE  LEADER  IN  SOHOLARSHIP 

sible,  a  more  manly  tone  of  thougM,  a  stronger  sense  of 
elevation  and  dignity,  a  more  ardent  zeal  to  fulfil  our 
destiny  at  every  hazard ; — ^so  that  when  you  shall  have 
left  this  place,  and  are  scattered  abroad  in  all  direc- 
tions, I  may  one  day  know  in  you,  wherever  you  may 
dwell,  men  whose  chosen  friend  is  Truth,  who  adhere 
to  her  in  life  and  in  death,  who  receive  her  when  she  is 
cast  out  by  all  the  world,  who  take  her  openly  under 
their  protection  when  she  is  traduced  and  calum- 
niated, who  for  her  sake  will  joyfully  bear  the  cun- 
ningly concealed  enmity  of  the  great,  the  dull  sneer 
of  the  coxcomb,  and  the  compassionating  shrug  of  the 
fool.'^ 

The  veritable  scholar  represents  the  happy  medium 
between  the  pedant  who  dwells  immoderately  upon 
the  non-essential,  and  the  dilettantish  person  who  toys 
with  half-truths  and  threadbare  generalizations,  which 
he  takes  at  second  hand  from  others  of  his  stripe, 
never  testing  any  of  them  by  the  inductive  method. 
The  scholar  is  not  loose,  and  he  is  not  dull.  The  vul- 
gar opinion  that  persons  of  great  learning  lack  taste 
and  insight,  which  is  characteristic  of  persons  who  lack 
all  three,  is  not  borne  out  by  an  examination  of  typical 
instances.  Of  Richard  Bentley's  first  publication  we 
are  told  by  his  biographer,  Monk : 

'The  style  of  the  Epistle  is  animated  and  lively, 
and  implies  the  gratification  felt  by  a  writer  engaged 
in  a  field  where  his  resources  are  abundant,  and  where 
he  is  sure  to  instruct  and  interest  his  reader.  A  per- 
son who  opens  it  with  the  expectation  of  a  dry  dis- 
quisition upon  certain  abstruse  topics  is  agreeably 
surprised  by  meeting  with  information  not  less  enter- 

*  Fichte,  Popular  WorTcs  1.  193-4. 


THE  SOHOLAE  IS  NOT  A  PEDANT  205 

taining  than  profound,  and  is  irresistibly  carried  on 
by  the  spirited  character  of  the  remarks. '  ^ 

The  scholar  is  known  by  his  consnniing  love  of  some 
special  department  of  knowledge  throughout  its  own 
minutest  interrelations,  and  in  its  relations'  to  knowl- 
edge as  a  whole.  On  this  point  let  us  hear  the  signifi- 
cant words  of  a  vivacious  writer,  well-known  for  his 
command  of  choice  and  fluent  English,  who  is  'not 
ashamed  of  being  classed  with  the  alphabetic  gram- 
marians,' though  he  has  stood  for  the  broadest  kind 
of  scholarship  in  America.  I  mean  Professor  Gilder- 
sleeve.    He  says : 

'The  intellectual  and  spiritual  history  of  most  men 
is  to  be  found  in  the  succession  of  their  teachers,  but 
it  must  be  remembered  that  the  function  of  the  teacher 
is  mainly  the  introduction  tO'  the  love  or  the  loves  of 
one 's  life.  .  .  .  That  mistress  of  mine  bore  a  lumber- 
ing name — Altertumswissenschaft — imperfectly  ren- 
dered by  ' '  Science  of  Antiquity. ' '  But  then  you  can- 
not translate  ' '  Gretchen, ' '  you  can  only  love  her.  The 
man  who  introduced  me  to  her  was  a  quiet  old  Privy 
Councillor,  ...  a  man  of  shuffling  gait,  of  slow  and 
deliberate  utterance,  who  read  his  lectures  from  a 
yellow  "heft"  to  which  were  attached  supplementary 
strips  of  paper,  and  yet  his  teaching  made  a  passion- 
ate classicist  out  of  an  amateurish  student  of  litera- 
ture. Boeckh  was  a  great  master,  the  greatest  living 
master  of  Hellenic  studies,  and  if  I  became  after  a 
fashion  a  Hellenist,  it  was  due  not  merely  to  the  cata- 
lytic effect  of  his  presence,  but  to  the  orbed  complete- 
ness of  the  ideal  he  evoked',  .  .  .  and  if  I  have  ever 
brought  any  vital  force  for  myself  and  others'  to  the 
study  of  the  classics,  it  has  been  through  the  belief 

iMonk,  Life  of  Eicluxrd  Bentley,  p.  25. 


206  THE  LEADEE  IN  SCHOLARSHIP 

cherished  from  early  manhood;  in  the  correlation  of  all 
the  various  departments  of  study. '  ^ 

The  leader  in  scholarship  perceives  the  relation  of 
his  own  effort,  not  only  to  that  of  other  scholars,  but 
to  the  corporate  functions  of  the  State.  He  thus  knows 
why  he  does  one  thing,  perhaps  seemingly  humble,  and 
abstains  from  another  that  is  superficially  alluring, 
in  the  light  of  his  public  service  and  the  necessities  of 
the  time.  He  conceives  of  himself  as  fulfilling  a  higher 
purpose  than  any  one  else  in  the  State  save  the  poet — 
or  artist  in  the  inclusive  sense — ^and  the  minister  of 
religion.  His  activity  is  closely  allied,  as  well  as  indis- 
pensable, to  theirs.  And  when  their  energy  flags,  he 
must  redouble  his  efforts.  'When  the  death  of  his  emi- 
nent predecessor,  Edouard  Laboulaye,  left  vacant  the 
position  [of  Administrator  of  the  College  de  France],' 
Renan,  says  Gaston  Paris,  'declared  to  his  colleagues 
that  the  place  was  the  only  one  for  which  he  had  ever 
been  ambitious,  and  that  it  seemed  to  him  to  be  the 
highest  and  most  beautiful  that  a  Frenchman  could 
occupy. '  ^  And  in  conmection  with  another  celebrated 
Orientalist,  a  man  of  Jewish  blood,  the  same  Gaston 
Paris  observed : 

'We  are  come,  as  [Darmesteter]  himself  said,  to  the 
times  described  by  the  prophet:  "Behold,  the  days 
come,  saith  the  Lord  God,  that  I  will  send  a  famine 
in  the  land,  not  a  famine  of  bread,  nor  a  thirst  for 
water,  but  of  hearing  the  wor(fe  of  the  Lord.    And 

*  Hellas  and  Hesperia,  pp.  40-43. 

2  Gaston.  Paris,  Penseurs  et  Poetes,  1896,  p.  326. 


SCHOLARS,  POETS,  AND  PEOPHETS  207 

they  shall  wander  from  sea'to  sea,  and  from  the  north 
even  to  the  east ;  they  shall  run  to  and  fro  to  seek  the 
word  of  the  Lord,  and  shall  not  find  it.  In  that  day 
shall  the  fair  virgins  and  young  men  faint  for  thirst. ' ' 
To  that  thirst  which  he  felt  about  him  [Darmesteter] 
pointed  out  the  place  where  he  discerned  fresh  foun- 
tains, and  cisterns  filled  with  water  from  heaven. '  ^ 

The  leader  in  scholarship  is  aware  that  learning 
cannot  to  any  considerable  extent  be  directly  trans- 
ferred from  one  person  to  another,  but  is  a  power 
which  must  be  organically  developed  in  the  individ- 
ual. As  a  teacher,  accordingly,  he  makes  little  at- 
tempt to  deal  with  immature  students  in  squadrons 
and  gross  bands.  So  was  it  with  Renan,  of  whom 
we  already  have  spoken.  Though  endowed  with  a 
faculty  of  popular  exposition  unequaled  perhaps  in 
his  age  and  nation,  he  did  not  hesitate  to  announce 
that  he  regarded  his  true  function  to  be  the  initiat- 
ing of  a  small  number  of  scholars  into  his  own  spe- 
cial field  of  research.^ 

Since  the  function  of  the  scholar  is  one  definite, 
indivisible  kind  of  activity,  the  more  scholarly  a  man 
is,  the  more  typical  will  he  be,  and  the  more  indi- 
vidual. This  is  a  difficult  thought,  it  may  be,  for 
those  who  have  never  been  happy  enough  to  recog- 
nize scholarship  as  a  personal  force,  or  to  see  in  it 
a  natural  form  of  life.  But  those  who  have  been 
well-taught  have  discerned  the  truth  in  the  indi- 
viduality of  their  teachers.    When  his  students  and 

^Ibid.,  pp.  5-6;  cf.  Amos  8.  11-13. 
2  Ibid.,  p.  328. 


208  THE  LEADER  IN  SOHOLARSHIP 

friends  throughout  the  -^orld  presented  that  great- 
est of  mediaevalists,  the  late  Gaston  Paris,  with  a 
medal  in  honor  of  his  election  to  the  Academy,  they 
addressed  him  in  part  as  follows: 

'No  doubt,  in  summoning  you  to  join  her,  the 
French  Academy  has  meant  to  honor  in  a  more  par- 
ticular way  the  author,  the  man  of  letters  for  whom 
the  rigors  of  precise  investigation  have  occasioned 
no  loss  in  the  sense  of  beauty.  As  for  us  [pupils 
and  fellow-scholars] ,  we  make  no  distinction ;  for  the 
profound  sympathy  which  we  desire  to  signalize 
makes  no  distinction  between  the  man  and  his 
work. '  ^ 

A  writer  in  one  of  the  general  encyclopaedias  has 
also  detected  the  essential  unity  of  this  distinct, 
refined,  and  comprehensive  soul: 

'Since  Sainte-Beuve,  who  gave  little  attention  to 
the  linguistic  side,  the  French  nation  had  had  no 
critic  so  great  as  Gaston  Paris.  In  him  the  philolo- 
gist and  the  lover  of  beauty  were  at  one.  Paris  was 
reared  among  literary  men.  Toward  the  end  of  his 
life  he  was  at  the  head  of  scientific  literary  criticism 
in  France.  He  had  no  showy  theories,  but  his  dis- 
coveries were  many,  and  his  knowledge  was  so  wide 
that  other  great  scholars  were  loath  to  assail  his 
views.  Yet  his  influence,  which  had  been  won  by  his 
steadfastly  scientific  attitude,  and  by  the  modera- 
tion, clearness,  and  charm  of  his  thought,  created  no 
doctrinary  school.  He  had  rare  personal  dignity,  a 
keen  but  sober  wit,  an  extraordinary  memory,  and  a 
wide  acquaintance  with  men.     .  .  .  He  excelled  not 

1  A  Monsieur  Gaston  Paris  ...  en  Souvenir  de  son  Election 
d  V Academic  Frangaise  .  .  .  ses  Eleves  et  sea  Amis,  1896,  pp. 
3^. 


GASTON  PAEIS  209 

only  in  textual  critieism,  but  in  teaching  and  in  arous- 
ing a  sound  love  of  old  literature. '  ^ 

The  great  scholar,  being  a  leader  and  enthusiast, 
possessing  the  evidence  of  things  unsieen  by  the 
masses,  and  full  of  faith  in  conserving  both  the  little 
and  the  great  within  his  province,  is  rigorous, 
methodical,  and  exacting  in  his  pursuit  of  the  unify- 
ing ideal.  "When  the  necessity  arises,  he  will  be- 
come a  gadfly  like  Socrates,  or  a  whetstone  like 
Horace.  M.  Frederic  Masson  was  aware  of  this, 
when  he  said  of  his  predecessor  in  the  Academy, 
thinking  of  him  in  his  prime: 

'M.  Gaston  Paris  returned  to  France,  convinced  of 
the  excellence  of  the  German  methods,  and  deeply 
tinged  with  the  German  spirit,  not  only  through  the 
forms  of  study  which  he  had  adopted,  but  through 
the  direction  that  had  been  given  to  his  thoughts. 
At  the  same  time,  his  intelligence  was  of  too  high 
an  order  to  be  content  with  treading  in  furrows  that 
were  already  ploughed;  and  he  had  hopes  of  opening 
new  ones  upon  the  soil  of  France.  Proposing,  there- 
fore, to  show  by  his  own  example  that  the  French 
were  as  capable  as  any  other  nation  of  perseverance 
in  scholarship,  of  precision  in  criticism,  of  ingenuity 
in  comparison,  and  of  rigor  in  the  drawing  of  a  con- 
clusion, he  naturalized  the  science  which  he  had 
brought  from  Germany,  and  confidently  aimed  to 
win  for  France  the  supremacy  in  those  studies  that 
were  essentially  French.  .  .  .  Before  long,  his  oral 
instruction,  productive  though  it  had  been  of  results, 
did  not  suffice  for  the  energy  which  he  brought  to 
his  task.     To  adapt  the  French  spirit  to  this  new 

1  New  International  Encyclopedia,  ed.  of  1903,  13.  713. 


210  THE  LEADER  IN  SCHOLARSHIP 

method,  it  must  be  subdued  to  a  constant  surveillance 
which  would  not  allow  the  slightest  hesitation  or 
falling  away,  but  would  steadily  maintain  the  activ- 
ity of  those  who  attended  his  school,  and  unceasingly 
reveal  to  them  the  authority  of  the  master.  There 
was  need  of  a  discipline  stringent,  impartial,  and 
hard,  which  should  call  attention  to  faults,  record 
results,  chastise  foolish  blunders,  and  declare  itself 
as  much  by  the  qualities  of  exactitude  and  distinct- 
ness as  by  a  general  competency.  M.  Gaston  Paris 
was  one  of  the  founders  of  the  Revue  Critique.  In 
this  capacity,  he  subjected  all  books  which,  closely 
or  remotely,  touched  upon  his  own  studies  to  a 
formidable  inquisition,  a  mode  of  analysis  which, 
banishing  phrases  to  the  point  of  abbreviating  names, 
winnowed  out  the  facts,  not  suffering  a  single  one 
to  pass  that  was  uncertain,  and  in  terms  which  were 
severe,  and  sometimes  cruel,  formulated  judgments 
that  were  definitive.  No  one  ventured  to  appeal,  for 
the  response  would  have  come,  crushing  and  inex- 
orable. '  ^ 

Finally,  the  scholar  tempers  the  severity  which  he 
must  exercise  in  his  high  calling,  and  the  pride 
which  he  ought  to  take  in  it,  as  well  as  the  melan- 
choly of  emulation  which  is  said  to  afflict  him,  with 
a  humility  and  pity  which  are  often  misleading  to 
the  hard-headed  man  of  business  and  the  foremost 
of  the  clamorous  mob.  He  pities  those  who  have 
missed,  or  seen  and  lost  again,  the  vision  of  the 
Source  of  all  the  light  that  is  in  the  material  and 
immaterial  universe ;  for  as  the  lecturer  at  Erlangeh 
put  it: 

^ Le  Temps  (Paris),  Supplement  au  Journal  du  29  Janvier, 
1904. 


THE  SCHOLAR  IS  HUMBLE  211 

'The  whole  of  the  training  and  education  which 
an  age  calls  learned  culture  is  only  the  means  to- 
wards a  knowledge  of  the  attainable  portion  of  the 
Divine  Idea,  and  is  only  valuable  in  so  far  as  it 
actually  is  such  a  means,  and  truly  fulfils  its  pur- 
pose.' ^ 

And  the  scholar  is  humble,  because,  with  the  poet, 
he  knows  that  pride, 

Howe'er  disguised  in  its  own  majesty, 

Is  littleness;  that  he  who  feels  contempt 

For  any  living  thing,  hath  faculties 

Which  he  has  never  used ;  that  thought  with  him 

Is  in  its  infancy.  .  .  . 

O  be  wiser,  Thou! 
Instructed  that  true  knowledge  leads  to  love; 
True  dignity  abides  with  him  alone 
Who,  in  the  silent  hour  of  inward  thought, 
Can  still  suspect,  and  still  revere  himself, 
In  lowliness  of  heart.^ 

The  scholar  is  as  humble  in  his  unwearied  patience 
as  in  his  unwearied  effort.    Says  Fichte : 

'The  scholar  ...  is  the  teacher  of  the  human  race. 
...  He  cannot  desire  to  hurry  forward  humanity  at 
once  to  the  goal  which  perhaps  gleams  brightly  be- 
fore his  own  vision — the  road  cannot  be  overleaped; 
he  must  only  take  care  that  it  do  not  stand  still,  and 
that  it  do  not  turn  back.  In  this  respect  the  scholar 
is  the  guide  of  the  human  race.'  ^ 

*  Ficlite,  Popular  Works  1.  211. 

^  Wordsworth,  Lines  left  upon  a  Seat  in  a  Yew-tree  50  ff . 

*  FiGhte,  Popular  Worlcs  1.  191-2. 


212      THE  LEADER  IN  SCHOLAESHIP 

How  eloquently  has  the  trained  and  gifted  seer 
of  the  Middle  Ages  illustrated  the  pity  and  humil- 
ity of  the  scholar!  Dante,  in  truth,  has  so  com- 
pletely fused  the  thought  of  the  Old  and  the  New 
Testament  in  respect  to  the  contemplative  life  that 
our  series  of  authoritative  utterances  may  fittingly 
conclude  with  a  passage  from  the  opening  of  his 
Convivio: 

*As  the  Philosopher  says  at  the  beginning  of  the 
First  Philosophy,  "all  men  naturally  desire  to  have 
knowledge. ' '  ^  The  reason  of  this  may  be  that  every- 
thing, being  impelled  by  foresight  belonging  to  its 
own  nature,  tends  to  seek  its  own  perfection.  Where- 
fore, inasmuch  as  knowledge  is  the  final  perfection 
of  our  soul  in  which  our  final  happiness  consists,  all 
men  are  naturally  subject  to  the  desire  for  it.  Many, 
however,  are  deprived  of  this  noblest  perfection 
through  various  causes  which,  operating  within  or 
without  the  man,  place  the  possession  of  knowledge 
beyond  his  reach. 

'Within  the  man  there  may  be  two  defects  and 
hindrances,  the  one  appertaining  to  the  body,  the 
other  to  the  soul.  That  appertaining  to  the  body 
arises  when  its  parts  are  not  properly  ordered,  so 
that  it  is  receptive  of  nothing,  as  is  the  case  with  the 
deaf  and  dumb,  and  the  like ;  that  appertaining  to 
the  soul  arises  when  wickedness  prevails  over  her  so 
that  she  becomes  a  follower  of  vicious  delights, 
wherein  she  gives  way  to  such  deception  that  on 
account  of  these  she  holds  cheap  everything  else. 

'Outside  the  man,  in  the  same  way,  two  causes 
may  be  apprehended,  one  of  which  subjects  him  to 
necessity,  the  other  to  sloth.  The  first  is  the  care 
of  the  family  and  of  the  State,  which  properly  draws 

*  Aristotle,  Metaphysica,  first  sentence. 


DANTE  ON  CONTEMPLATION  213 

to  itself  the  ^eater  part  of  mankind,  so  that  they 
cannot  afford  leisure  for  contemplation.  The  second 
is  the  fault  of  the  place  where  a  person  is  bom  and 
brought  up,  which  sometimes  will  be  not  only  devoid 
of  every  kind  of  study,  but  remote  from  studious 
people.  .  .  . 

'Plainly,  therefore,  may  any  one  who  ponders 
carefully  see  that  there  is  but  a  small  remnant  who 
can  attain  to  the  state  desired  by  all,  and  that  those 
who  are  hindered,  and  live  always  famishing  for 
want  of  this  food  intended  for  all,  are  almost  in- 
numerable. Oh,  happy  are  those  few  who  sit  at  that 
table  where  the  bread  of  angels  is  eaten,  and  wretched 
are  those  who  share  the  food  of  cattle.  But  since  a 
man  is  naturally  a  friend  of  every  man,  and  every 
friend  grieves  for  the  defect  of  him  whom  he  loves, 
they  who  are  fed  at  so  lofty  a  table  are  not  without 
pity  for  those  whom  they  see  go  about  eating  grass 
and  acorns  on  the  pasture  of  beasts.  And  since  pity 
is  the  mother  of  kind  deeds,  they  who  have  knowledge 
always  bestow  liberally  of  their  boon  riches  on  those 
who  are  veritably  poor;  and  are  as  it  were  a  living 
fountain  by  the  water  of  which  the  natural  thirst  men- 
tioned above  is  slaked.  I  who  am  not  seated  at  the  table 
of  the  blest,  but  am  fled  from  the  pasture  of  the 
common  herd,  and  at  the  feet  of  those  who  sit  at 
that  table  am  gathering  up  of  that  which  falls  from 
them,  perceive  how  wretched  is  the  life  of  those 
whom  I  have  left  behind  by  the  sweetness  which  I 
taste  in  that  which  little  by  little  I  gather  up. 
Moved  by  pity,  therefore,  and  not  forgetful  of  my 
own  state,  ...  I  intend  to  prepare  for  all  men  a 
banquet.  ...  I  do  not  wish  that  any  one  should  sit 
at  table  with  any  of  his  organs  in  bad  order,  because 
he  has  not  teeth  or  tongue  or  palate,  nor  any  one 
addicted  to  vice,  because  his  stomach  is  full  of  poison- 
ous and  contrary  humors,  so  that  it  could  not  retain 
15 


214       THE  LEADER  IN  SCHOLAESHIP 

my  meat.  But  let  every  one  come  hither  who  through 
domestic  or  public  anxiety  cannot  appease  the  hunger 
that  men  feel,  and  let  him  sit  at  one  table  with  all 
others  who  are  likewise  hindered.  .  .  .  And  I  pray 
all  of  them  that  if  the  banquet  be  not  so  splendid  as 
beseems  its  profession,  they  will  impute  every  fault 
not  to  my  will  but  to  my  want  of  power,  because  my 
will  here  aims  at  perfect  and  precious  liberality. '  ^ 

Does  a  smile  of  derision,  not  untinged  with  pain  and 
anger,  run  over  the  countenance  of  some  most  grave 
man  of  practical  affairs',  when,  with  a  deliberation 
greater  than  his  own,  we  assure  him  that  the  life  of 
contemplation  is  not  only  more  to  be  desired,  but  in- 
finitely more  effective  than  his? — That  it  is  more  to  be 
desired  because  it  is  more  effective?  Its  effects  are 
more  lasting;  for  we  may  now  identify  this  superior 
scholarly  life  with  the  life  not  only  of  profound  imagi- 
nation and  clearest  insight,  but,  as  "Wordsworth  does, 
with  that  of  absolute  power.^  What  the  poet  calls 
insight  and  imagination,  the  author  of  a  celebrated 
letter  diealing  with  thisi  higher  life  calls  Faith^ — the 
power  by  which  some  men  have  gained  a  good  repu- 
tation, others  understood  the  first  principles  of  celes- 
tial mechanics,  others  found  the  way  to  make  pecu- 
niary sacrifices  that  in  the  end  were  profitable,  and 
still  others  acquired  the  means  of  subduing  the  shape- 
less horror  that  Enoch  avoided,  and  the  belly  is  most 
afraid  of.  By  the  use  of  this  power,  the  people  that 
love  the  crowded  city,  and  control  most  of  the  things 

1  Dante,  Convivio,  trans,  by  W.  W.  Jackson,  pp.  31-4. 

2  Wordsworth,  Prelude  14.  188-205. 

3  Hebr.  11. 


THE  THINGS  THAT  AEE  C-SISAE'S  215 

that  are  Csesar's,  were  yet  led  through  the  deep,  as  a 
horse  through  the  wilderness,  that  they  should  not 
stumble ;  for  the  Jew  as  well  as  the  Greek  has  shown 
us  that  if  the  practical  is  duly  subordinated  to  the 
contemplative  life,  there  is  no  quarrel  between  them. 
It  was  a  Jew  who  declared  that  wisdom  is  better  than 
rubies,  and  that  all  the  things  that  may  be  desired  are 
not  to  be  compared  to  it :  'I,  wisdom,  dwell  with  pru- 
dence ...  I  have  strength.  By  me  kings  reign,  and 
princes  decree  justice.  .  ,  .  My  fruit  is  better  than 
gold,  yea  than  fine  gold ;  and  my  revenue  than  choice 
silver. '  ^ 

Do  we  believe  this,  or  not?  If  we  believe  it,  let  us 
awake  from  our  apathy  in  the  matter  of  inducting 
young  men  into  the  life  of  scholarship.  Away  with  the 
false  and  cowardly  arguments  by  which  the  life  of  the 
properly  disciplined  teacher  is  represented  as  tame  and 
unsatisfying.  The  life  of  the  unfit,  untrained  teacher, 
one  may  grant,  can  hardly  be  pleasing  or  satisfactory 
to  himself  or  to  any  one  else.  But  were  the  vocation 
of  the  scholar  even  worse  rewarded  than  it  is  with  the 
things  of  which  Peter  had  none,  our  present  duty  in 
America  would  be  not  a  whit  the  less  clear.  To  what 
end  do  we  say  to  the  elect  of  our  rising  generation  that 
they  are  wise  if  they  seek  to  engage  in  one  or  other  of 
the  professions  that  offer  a  rich  reward  in  the  things 
of  the  belly  ?  What  call  have  we  to  defraud  those  who 
can  earn  them  of  the  highest  enjoyments  possible  to 
human  nature  ?  If  the  country  at  large  has  been  blind 
to  their  needs  and  its  own,  it  is  plain  that  from  some 

1  Prov.  8.  11  ff. 


216  THE  LEADER  IN  SCHOLARSHIP 

source  the  country  must  obtain  better  organs  of  vision, 
and  the  new  ones  must  be  better  disciplined. 

There  seems  to  be  one  sole  remedy  for  most  of  the 
ailments  of  our  educational  organism,  however  varied 
the  complaints  may  appear  to  be ;  and  murmurs  arise 
on  every  side.  As  for  the  cause  of  these  ailments, 
divers  folk  diversely  deem : 

As  many  heddes  as  manye  wittes  ther  been.^ 

But  if  we  liken,  not  the  State,  but  our  system  of 
education,  to  the  magic  horse,  a  work  of  art  that  should 
move  like  a  work  of  nature,  it  may  be  said  that  the 
cure  for  its  ills  will  have  little  to  do  with  the  outward 
mechanism.  Some  may  think  that  the  mechanism  is 
unnecessarily  complex.  But  in  any  case  that  endless 
tinkering  with  the  visible  parts  of  the  machine,  which 
occupies  the  attention  of  so  many  doctors,  has  seem- 
ingly added  little  to  the  vitality  of  our  instruction. 
My  notion  of  the  trouble  with  this  steed  is  that  he 
needs  more  of  a  certain  kind  of  fuel,  or  spiritual 
naphtha,  which,  if  brought  from  its  Mediterranean 
source,  and  properly  ignited  within  him,  would  cause 
his  eye  to  gleam  again,  and  enable  him  to  mount  and 
flash  through  the  empyrean. 

It  is  sometimes  maintained  that  educational  reform 
must  begin  at  the  bottom,  and  work  upward^ — from 
the  gouty  foot  of  the  public  school,  doubtless,  to  the 
blindfold  head  of  ill-guided  research  among  advanced 
students  of  the  humanities.  But  the  founders  of  the 
University  of  Berlin  thought  otherwise ;  and  where  in 

*  Chaueer,  Squire's  Tale  202-3. 


CURE  OF  THE  BODY  EDUCATIONAL  217 

educational  history  is  there  an  instance  of  a  regener- 
ation from  below?  The  hearing  ear,  and  the  seeing 
eye,  they  are  both  of  them  gifts  from  above,  and  their 
healing  ministrations  are  potent  throughout  the  body 
downwards;  as  Hippocrates  observed,  therefore,  no 
injury  to  the  head  should  be  neglected.  Let  us  have 
no  more,  then,  of  the  heresy  that  the  graduate  schools 
of  our  country  may  shift  for  themselves,  while  we 
teach  a  horde  of  Freshmen  the  rudiments  of  English 
grammar  and  orthography.  One  apostle  is  worth 
many  sparrows,  and  one  arc-light  equal  to  a  thousand 
farthing  candles.  Let  there  be  fewer  among  the  led, 
and  let  there  be  leaders  who  are  continually  purging 
their  vision. 

In  other  words,  a  solution  of  all  sorts  of  educational 
difficulties  that  have  not  yielded  to  a  prolonged  me- 
chanical treatment  is  this:  let  every  one  who  has  a 
capacity  for  the  life  of  contemplation,  and  at  present 
feels  that  he  is  not  leading  it,  in  whatever  college  or 
university  he  be,  straightway  begin  to  lead  it,  paying 
the  homage  that  is  due  to  Athens,  the  eye  of  Greece, 
Mother  of  Arts,  and  to  Beatrice  and  Rachel  of  the 
direct  and  perfect  vision.  Though  in  some  the  vital 
faith  be  almost  dead,  shriveled  to  the  proportions  of 
a  mustard-seed,  nevertheless  let  it  be  immersed  in  the 
light  that  emanates  from  Italy  and  Greece  and  Pales- 
tine, and  it  may  kindle  and  spring  up  into  a  welcome 
efflorescence.  As  for  the  rest,  who,  like  Mr.  Kipling, 
chant  the  praise  of  the  Sons  of  Martha,  and  win  favor- 
able glances  from  Rachel's  'squint-eyed'  sister,  Leah, 
of  the  practical  vocations,  let  them  betake  themselves 


218  THE  LEADER  IN  SOHOLARSHIP 

to  their  labor,  which  is  necessary  and  honorable ;  but 
let  them  cease  from  their  querulous  assertion  of  the 
rights  of  the  material  body,  lest  they  disturb  the  essen- 
tial activity  of  the  soul  and  of  human  life. 

But  to  all  who  by  scholarly  works  continually  assert 
their  interest  in  the  things  of  the  spirit  comes  the  eter- 
nal assurance  that  they  have  chosen  the  better  part; 
for  they  are  in  league  with  the  rulers  of  men,  with  that 
great  society,  'the  noble  living  and  the  noble  dead,' 
who  have  perceived  through  faith  and  imagination 
that  truth  and  beauty  are  one — who  are  the  victorious 
power  in  the  world. 


XII 

WAYS  AND  MEANS  OF  IMPROVING 
UNIVERSITY  SCHOLARSHIP^ 

I.    A  Reform  op  the  Method  of  Instruction 
BY  Lectures 

THE  ease  for  lectures  as  a  means  of  instruction 
was  ably  argued  by  the  late  Professor  Paulsen 
in  his  German  Universities;  ^  yet  it  is  clear  from  the 
arguments  attacked  by  Paulsen  that  there  has  been  no 
little  dissatisfaction  on  the  Continent  with  the  grow- 
ing tendency  there  among  university  teachers  to  con- 
vey information  by  lecturing  to  the  students,  at  the 
expense  of  seminary  and  proseminary  courses  in  which 
the  individual  student  hitherto  has  taken  an  active 
part  in  his  own  education.  Moreover,  it  is  not  quite 
correct  to  say,  as  Paulsen  does,  that  there  must  be  some 
justification  for  a  system  that  has  had  a  continuous 
history  from  the  time  of  Aristotle  and  the  Greeks  gen- 
erally, through  the  Middle  Ages,  and  down  to  our  own 

*  Under  this  head  I  have  revised,  combined,  and  extended,  four 
communicatians  which  severally  appeared  in  the  Cornell  Alumni 
News  for  June  15,  1916,  May  17,  1917,  and  May  24,  1917,  and 
the  Nation,  New  York,  for  May  4,  1918;  the  material  is  used 
with  the  kind  consent  of  the  editor  of  the  Cornell  Ahtmni  News 
and  the  editor  of  the  Nation. 

*  Trans,  by  Thilly  and  Elwang,  pp.  189-199. 

219 


220  WAYS  OF  IMPROVING  SCHOLABSHIP 

generation.  Socrates  did  not  lecture;  he  questioned 
his  pupils,  and  debated  with  them.  The  works  of  Plato 
that  have  reached  us  are  dialogues,  not  lectures.  And 
the  method  of  Aristotle  in  teaching  is  indicated  by 
the  name  of  'Peripatetic';  the  master  walked  and 
talked  with  his  students — he  did  not  mainly  talk  to 
them.  In  the  Middle  Ages,  again,  disputation  was  the 
recognized  method  of  arriving  at  the  truth.  Even 
formal  lectures  were  constantly  interrupted  by  ques- 
tions. The  Colloquies  of  Alcuin,  the  debates  of  Abe- 
lard,  are  equally  characteristic  of  the  earlier  and  the 
later  Middle  Ages.  The  dialogue,  the  conference  in 
the  true  sense,  was  the  predominant  form  of  instruc- 
tion with  the  best  teachers  whether  ancient  or  mediae- 
val, before  the  invention  of  printing,  when  the  easiest 
way  of  publishing  knowledge  was  by  dictation  to  a 
large  audience. 

But  further,  if  the  practice  of  lecturing  to  French 
or  German  university  students  is  questionable,  what 
shall  we  say  of  the  practice  when  transferred  from  the 
Continent  to  this  country,  where  conditions  are  so 
different — ^where  the  students  are  so  differently  pre- 
pared ?  Shall  we  not  frankly  confess,  where  they  are 
so  ill-prepared  ? 

If  it  is  proper  to  say  so,  I  am  one  of  those  who  be- 
lieve in  an  occasional  stimulating  lecture  on  a  literary 
topic  or  the  like,  for  the  purpose  of  arousing  the  latent 
interests  of  the  pupil,  or  less  frequently,  and  yet  often 
enough,  in  order  to  give  him  distinct  notions  of  the 
great  guiding  lines  that  run  through  the  subject  he 
is  studying,  of  the  interrelations  of  that  subject  with 


THE  CASE  AGAINST  LECTURES  221 

others  in  the  curriculum,  and  of  the  place  of  that  sub- 
ject in  the  sum- total  of  knowledge.  The  attention  of 
the  student  must  be  caught,  and  his  energies  awakened, 
by  every  legitimate  device.  Once  caught  and  stirred, 
his  interest  and  energies  may  be  profitably  directed 
into  channels  they  might  never  enter  of  themselves. 
But  it  does  not  follow  that  the  teacher  should  for  ever 
keep  striving  to  win  an  attention  that  has  once  been 
fairly  captured.  When  we  come  to  think  of  it,  the 
constant  use  of  lectures,  as  an  instrument  of  educa- 
tion to  which  all  other  instruments  are  made  subordi- 
nate, is  little  short  of  grotesque.  When,  we  may  ask, 
will  there  be  an  adequate  opportunity  for  the  pupil 
to  become  self-active,  if  in  the  main  he  is  taught  only 
to  listen  and  eopy?  Especially  ridiculous  is  the  cus- 
tom of  lecturing  to  the  Sophomores  and  Freshmen  in 
our  colleges  and  so-called  universities  as  if  they  really 
were  seasoned  university  students.  In  reality  they 
have  not,  as  compared  with  students  of  like  age  on  the 
Continent,  advanced  beyond  the  stage  of  preparation 
represented  by  the  last  two  years  of  a  German  gymna- 
sium or  a  French  lycee;  not  to  speak  of  the  manifest 
inferiority  in  attainments — ^in  actual  knowledge  and 
in  critical  ability — ^of  our  Juniors  and  Seniors  in  com- 
parison with  Continental  students  when  they  reach 
the  great  European  universities.  How  preposterous, 
then,  is  the  tendency  to  introduce  teaching  by  lectures 
into  our  preparatory  and  high  schools ! 

I  naturally  have  in  mind  the  practice  of  lecturing  on 
English  authors  and  on  the  history  of  English  litera- 
ture.   Accordingly,  three  of  the  four  passages  which 


222  WAYS  OF  IMPROVING  SCHOLARSHIP 

follow  are  chosen  from  writers  whose  position  in  Eng- 
lish literature  lends  a  special  force  to  what  they  say. 
I  give  all  four  without  needless  preamble,  but  may  add 
that,  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  the  utterances  of  Dr.  John- 
son and  the  poet  Wordsworth  on  this  topic  have  never 
before  been  brought  together,  though  the  resemblance 
between  them  is  singularly  close.  The  passage  from 
Hilty  may  serve  to  recall  a  writer,  of  great  good  sense, 
who  is  perhaps  less  frequently  read  to-day  than  was 
the  ease  fifteen  or  twenty  years  ago. 
Johnson's  opinion  is  recorded  by  Boswell : 

'Talking  of  education,  "People  have  nowadays," 
said  he,  "got  a  strange  opinion  that  everything  should 
be  taught  by  lectures.  Now  I  cannot  see  that  lectures 
can  do  so  much  good  as  reading  the  books  from  which 
the  lectures  are  taken.  I  know  nothing  that  can  be 
best  taught  by  lectures,  except  where  experiments  are 
to  be  shown.  You  may  teach  chymistry  by  lectures — 
you  might  teach  making  of  shoes  by  lectures ! "  '  ^ 

In  June,  1825,  Wordsworth  wrote  to  Lord  Lonsdale, 
alluding  to  'the  London  College  Committee,'  and  the 
educational  scheme  proposed  by  Brougham : 

*As  to  teaching  belles-lettres,  languages,  law,  polit- 
ical economy,  morals,  etc.,  by  lectures,  it  is  absurd. 
Lectures  may  be  very  useful  in  experimental  philos- 
ophy, geology,  and  natural  history,  or  any  art  or 
science  capable  of  illustration  by  experiments,  opera- 
tions, and  specimens ;  but  in  other  departments  of 
knowledge  they  are,  in  most  cases,  worse  than  super- 
fluous.   Of  course  I  do  not  include  in  the  above  censure 

*  Boswell 's  Life  of  Samuel  Johnson,  Oxford  edition,  1904,  1. 
337.    The  year,  as  noted  by  Boswell,  is  1766. 


WITNESSES  AGAINST  LECTURING  223 

** college  lectures,"  as'  they  are  called,  when  the  busi- 
ness consists,  not  of  haranguing  the  pupils,  but  in  as- 
certaining the  progress  they  have  made. '  ^ 

Goldwin  Smith,  himself  an  engaging  lecturer  when 
he  chose  to  appear  before  an  audience,  is  not  less 
urgent  than  Wordsworth.  Writing  to  Professor  Nor- 
ton in  1869,  he  says : 

*I  try  to  keep  him  [the  President  of  Cornell  Univer- 
sity] from  spending  more  money  in  flashy  public  lec- 
tures (of  which  we  have  far  too  many  already)  and 
other  unsubstantial  things,  and  to  get  him  to  turn  all 
his  resources,  limited  as  they  are,  to  the  provision  of 
means  for  hard  work.  .  .  . 

'Curtis  and  Lowell  come  to  lecture  next  term.  I 
regard  their  arrival  socially  with  unmixed  pleasure; 
academically  with  mixed  feelings.  They  will  both  be 
most  brilliant  I  have  no  doubt ;  and  the  more  brilliant 
they  are,  the  less  inclined  our  boys  will  be  after  hear- 
ing them  to  go  back  to  the  hard  work  by  which  alone 
any  solid  results  can  be  attained.  .  .  .  The  lesson  of 
thorough,  hard  study  is  the  one  which  these  people 
have  to  learn.  They  will  listen  to  Curtis,  Lowell,  and 
Dwight  generalizing  on  their  respective  subjects,  with- 
out knowing  any  of  the  facts  on  which  the  general- 
izations are  based,  and  go  away  fancying  themselves 
on  a  level  with  the  most  advanced  thought  of  the 
age. '  2 

The  estimate  of  the  Swiss  jurist  and  university 
professor,  Carl  Hilty,  is  equally  forcible: 

^Letters  of  the  Wordsworth  Family,  ed.  hj  Knight,  2.  259- 
260. 

*  Goldwin  Smith  to  Charles  Eliot  Norton,  Ithaca,  March  10, 
1869;  in  the  letters  reprinted  in  the  Proceedings  of  the  Massa- 
chusetts Hisitorical  Society,  December,  1915,  pp.  148-9. 


224  WAYS  OF  IMPROVING  SCHOLABSHIP 

'Finally,  in  this  enumeration  of  the  things  which 
waste  one's  time,  I  may  add  that  one  must  not  per- 
mit himself  to  be  overburdened  with  superfluous 
tasks.  There  are  in  our  day  an  infinite  number  of 
these — correspondence,  committees,  reports,  and,  not 
the  least,  lectures.  All  of  them  take  time,  and  it  is 
extremely  probable  that  nothing  will  come  of  them. 
When  the  Apostle  Paul  was  addressing  the  Athen- 
ians, he  remarked  that  they  did  nothing  else  than 
to  hear  some  new  thing.  It  was  not  the  serious  part 
of  his  address,  or  its  spiritual  quickening,  to  which 
they  gave  their  attention;  it  was  its  novelty.  And 
the  outcome  of  his  sermon  was  simply  that  some 
mocked,  and  the  most  friendly  said  with  patronizing 
kindness :  "We  will  hear  thee  again  of  this  matter." 
Indeed,  the  reporter  of  the  incident  finds  it  neces- 
sary to  mention  expressly  that  one  member  of  the 
Athenian  city-council,  and  one  woman,  in  the  audi- 
ence received  some  lasting  good  from  the  Apostle's 
address.  How  is  it,  let  me  ask  you,  with  yourselves  ? 
Have  the  lectures  which  you  have  heard  been  to  you 
in  any  way  positive  influences  of  insight  and  deci- 
sion, or  have  they  been  merely  the  evidences  of  the 
speaker 's  erudition  ? '  ^ 

Far  too  much  of  our  university  instruction  is  given 
in  the  form  of  lectures,  and  this  seems  especially  de- 
plorable when  we  think  how  few  of  the  lecturers  have 
such  a  mastery  of  their  subjects  as  would  enable 
them  to  fill  chairs  in  the  European  universities. 
There  is  too  little  self-activity  on  the  part  of  the 

^  Happiness.  Essays  on  the  Meaning  of  Life.  By  Carl  Hilty, 
Professor  of  Consititutional  Law,  University  of  Bern.  Trans, 
by  Peabody,  New  York,  1903,  pp.  91-2. 


CHEAP  TEACHING  IS  POOE  225 

student,  who  does  not  like  to  be  passive  (though  he 
is  not  unwilling  to  be  entertained),  and  naturally 
turns  to  the  'student  activities' — to  football,  to  the 
glee-club,  to  the  editorial  desk  of  the  college  paper — 
in  order  to  find  something  to  do  that  he  deems  worthy 
of  a  man  with  a  backbone.  Furthermore,  the  larger 
the  audience,  the  more  the  lecturer  must  descend  to 
their  level  if  he  wishes  to  gain  attention.  This  is  a 
cheap  kind  of  teaching,  measured  in  dollars  and 
cents  at  the  office  of  the  university  treasurer;  it  is 
obviously  cheaper  to  pay  one  man  five  thousand 
dollars  a  year  to  lecture  to  fifteen  hundred  students 
three  times  a  week  than  to  pay  even  very  modest 
salaries  to  one  hundred  scholars  who  would  teach 
those  students  properly.  But  lecturing  saps  the 
energy  of  a  good  teacher  (one  who  is  not  bent  on 
amusing),  and  is  of  small  permanent  value  to  the 
student  who  desires  knowledge  of  his  own. 

The  remedy,  of  course,  calls  for  an  outlay  of  money 
beyond  anything  the  American  people  thus  far  has 
been  willing  to  grant  for  education — aside  from  the 
erection  of  school  and  university  buildings.  But 
our  recent  contact  with  foreign  nations,  the  experi- 
ence of  our  soldiers  in  France  after  the  armistice, 
the  glimpses  they  have  had  of  the  French  educa- 
tional system,  may  have  opened  the  eyes  of  America 
to  the  wisdom  of  liberal  expenditures  for  the  true 
ends  of  a  university  or  college.  The  French  dis- 
burse money  for  teaching  rather  than  buildings.  The 
French  throughout  the  war  kept  up  their  instruc- 
tion in  the  German  language  as  before,  well  aware 


226  WAYS  OF  IMPROVING  SCHOLARSHIP 

that  French,  German,  and  Latin  are  among  the  neces- 
sary tools  of  scholarship,  and  must  be  paid  for. 
"War  may  alter  sentiments,  but  cannot  change  intel- 
lectual facts.  Instead  of  attacking  the  study  of  Ger- 
man in  this  country,  we  should  attack  the  Conti- 
nental method  of  teaching  by  lectures;  there  is  not 
the  least  doubt  that  it  came  to  us  from  Germany 
rather  than  France — though  the  French  also  depend 
too  much  upon  lectures  in  their  system  of  higher 
education. 

II.  A  Reform  in  the  Methods  of  Recruiting 
Faculties 

In  the  American  college  and  university,  with  few 
exceptions,  the  methods  employed  in  recruiting  the 
faculty  are  not  the  best.  In  almost  every  case  the 
choice  of  a  new  instructor  or  professor  rests  with 
some  one  administrative  officer,  and  not  in  the  main 
with  a  committee  of  scholars.  Too  often  the  selec- 
tion of  a  professor  depends  upon  his  ability  to  give 
a  popular  lecture ;  and  upon  the  impression  he  makes 
in  two  or  three — or  even  one — of  these.  But  there 
is  no  established  procedure ;  and  there  should  be  one, 
clearly  understood  and  always  followed.  Here  we 
should  imitate  the  plan  that  is  pursued  in  the  Conti- 
nental universities,  but  in  only  a  very  few  institu- 
tions in  America.  The  record  of  a  candidate  for  a 
professorship  should  be  fully  investigated;  every 
line  he  has  written  should  be  read  by  a  committee 
of  men  proficient  in  the  special  field  he  represents, 
and  at  least  one  or  two  men  from  other  fields. 


METHODS  OF  RECBUITING  FACULTIES         227 

Particularly  vicious  is  our  way  of  adding  to  the 
staff  at  the  bottom  of  the  list.  Instructors  are  se- 
lected in  the  most  haphazard  fashion.  An  instructor 
in  English  will  be  taken  on  because  he  can  turn  out 
a  clever  jingle  of  verses,  or  because  he  has  read  Ibsen 
and  Strindberg,  or  because  he  wears  tailor-made 
clothes  and  shines  in  society.  If  the  university  is 
the  faculty,  a  more  or  less  permanent  body,  rather 
than  the  students,  who  continually  change,  nothing 
can  be  of  greater  importance  than  the  training  of 
the  men  who  are  to  become  instructors,  or  in  the  end 
professors,  and  a  rigorous,  even  heart-breaking,  se- 
lection of  the  fit.  In  these  days  of  enlightenment, 
we  should  no  longer  wink  at  the  appointment  of  a 
university  instructor,  overnight,  who  does  not  pos- 
sess the  doctoral  degree,  and  does  not  bid  fair  to  be- 
come a  productive  scholar. 

The  last  statement  is  not  meant  to  suggest  that  the 
mere  presence  of  the  letters  'Ph.D.'  after  a  man's 
name  entitles  him  to  become  a  university  teacher, 
any  more  than  the  letters  'B.A.'  in  the  same  posi- 
tion indicate  that  a  man  is  fit  for  life.  Character  in 
every  instance  is  the  thing  that  counts.  Yet  'Bache- 
lor of  Arts'  ought  to  imply  some  special  fitness  for 
life — otherwise  the  degree  represents  a  falsehood. 
And  'Doctor'  here  means  teacher,  or  it  means  noth- 
ing. Very  likely  we  ought  to  require  more  than  the 
doctorate  of  a  candidate  for  a  position  as  instruc- 
tor, but  certainly  not  less.  In  any  case,  regarded 
even  in  the  most  superficial  light,  the  doctoral  de- 
gree tells  us  that  its  possessor  has  spent  at  least 


228    WAYS  OF  IMPROVING  SCHOLAESHIP 

three  years  in  preparation  for  a  task  which  others 
would  like  to  perform  without  training.  That  a  man 
has  wished  for  training,  and  has  been  able  to  bring 
his  desire  to  its  normal  conclusion,  is  no  trifling  in- 
dication of  his  character.  But  if  we  observe  our 
candidate  more  narrowly,  and  find  him  to  be  a  man 
of  original  power,  and  well-trained  in  addition,  we 
are  sure  to  regard  him  more  favorably  than  if  he 
were  a  man,  let  us  suppose,  of  the  same  natural  abil- 
ity, but  untrained,  self-trained,  or  half-trained,  in 
the  subject  he  offered  to  teach. 

In  estimating  the  relation  between  the  training 
implied  in  the  doctoral  degree  and  the  capacity  to 
teach  there  is  sometimes  a  difference  of  opinion. 
The  properly  interested  outsider,  such  as  an  intelli- 
gent alumnus,  dealing  with  all  sorts  and  conditions 
of  men  in  business,  is  prone  to  underrate  the  value 
of  training  for  a  particular  position  in  the  univer- 
sity. But  the  person  whose  vital  concern  for  years 
has  been  the  problem  of  bettering  the  teaching  of 
English  in  the  preparatory  school  and  the  univer- 
sity will  neither  overrate  nor  underrate  it.  I  fully 
agree  with  any  one  who  thinks  that  the  ideal  man 
for  the  undergraduate  college  (and  for  the  gradu- 
ate school,  too,  and  for  every  other  stage  of  educa- 
tion as  well)  is  the  'creative  teacher.'  But  if  this 
means  to  any  one  the  untrained,  rather  than  the 
well-trained,  genius,  there  we  part  company.  What 
Kenyon  Cox  said  of  painters  may  be  applied  to  the 
art  of  teaching :  '  Ignorance  was  never  yet  creative. '  ^ 

'  See  my  Methods  and  Aims  in  the  Study  of  Literature,  p.  19, 


TEAINED  UNIVERSITY  TEACHEES  229 

In  selecting  and  preparing  teachers,  however,  we 
need  not  reckon  with  heaven-sent  geniuses.  We  must 
take  the  better  among  the  candidates  for  this  pro- 
fession, and  must  try  to  cultivate  such  powers  as 
they  have,  on  the  principle  that  good  capacity  can 
be  brought  'to  real  effectiveness  only  through  rigor- 
ous discipline — such  discipline  as  is  demanded  on 
the  Continent  of  Europe  of  every  university  teacher. 
To  this  the  only  thing  that  with  us  in  any  fashion 
corresponds  is  the  training  for  the  doctorate.  When 
we  succeed  in  establishing  a  better  kind  of  degree, 
or  when  we  shall  have  raised  the  doctorate  until  it 
is  always  something  better  than  it  often  is  at  pres- 
ent, then  we  can  exact  better  credentials  of  our 
teachers.  But  credentials  they  must  have,  unless 
we  choose  to  disclaim  the  principle  that  also  governs 
the  admission  of  younger  students  to  an  academic 
community. 

Unfortunately  I  am  in  the  position  of  one  who  in 
saying  the  normal  and  sensible  thing  is  likely  to  be 
accused  of  paradox ;  whereas  it  is  the  reverse  of  this 
sensible  position  that  is  paradoxical.  It  is  not  an 
*  accident '  when  a  well-trained  and  productive  scholar 
is  a  good  teacher  of  undergraduates,  or  of  children, 
either.  Given  the  natural  instinct,  good  teaching  is 
the  direct  result  of  possessing  real  instead  of  second- 
hand knowledge;  the  result  of  contact  with  things 
themselves  rather  than  with  what  is  commonly  said 
of  them;  the  result  of  being  familiar  with  reality, 
and  not  with  shadows.  If  I  may  be  allowed  to  say 
so,  during  my  career  as  a  professor  of  English  I 
16 


230    WAYS  OF  IMPEOVING  SCHOLAESHIP 

never  have  let  slip  an  opportunity  to  make  the  ac- 
quaintance of  the  most  successful  teachers  of  this 
subject;  and  it  is  my  good  fortune  to  know  person- 
ally a  number  of  the  best  in  England,  France,  and 
Germany,  as  well  as  in  this  country.  With  excep- 
tions so  rare  as  to  be  negligible,  the  best  teachers  of 
English  have  done  the  sort  of  work  that  leads  to  the 
doctorate,  mostly  hold  the  corresponding  degree,  and 
have  continued  all  their  lives  to  be  productive  schol- 
ars. It  is  the  exception,  however,  that  is  more  easily 
remembered,  and  the  remembrance  too  often  is  al- 
lowed to  interfere  with  general  plans  for  education; 
the  more  reason,  therefore,  for  our  cleaving  to  the 
normal.  I  happen  to  have  gained  direct  information 
concerning  what  are  probably  the  best  two  under- 
graduate courses  in  Shakespeare  given  in  America ;  in 
each  case  the  teacher  is  a  man  well-known  for  his  pro- 
ficiency in  special  research,  who  truly  merits  the 
name  of  productive  scholar  both  for  the  ejffect  of  his 
teaching  upon  his  pupils,  and  for  the  instruction  and 
inspiration  he  affords  to  other  teachers  through  his 
publications.  The  best  teachers  of  Milton  in  this 
country  are,  as  I  believe,  personally  known  to  me, 
every  one;  and  every  one  is  a  productive  scholar. 
If  there  be  men  who  have  attained  the  highest  suc- 
cess as  teachers  of  English,  and  who  yet  have  done 
nothing  to  instruct  their  peers,  I  have  not  heard  of 
them,  in  spite  of  a  persistent  effort  to  discover  such. 
Doubtless  the  average  of  anything  human  is  not 
very  good.  The  average  physician  is  a  charlatan, 
the  average  lawyer  a  pettifogger,  the  average  clergy- 


EESEARCH  IMPROVES  THE  TEACHER  231 

man  a  hypocrite,  and  so  on;  at  least  in  the  opinion 
of  the  world,  which  is  partly  right.  And  so,  no 
doubt,  the  average  scholar,  so-called,  is  in  some  meas- 
ure a  pedant,  and  the  average  possessor  of  the  de- 
gree of  Ph.D.  not  good  enough  for  a  first-class  uni- 
versity. But  for  the  average  pedagogue  who  aspires 
to  the  name  of  university  teacher,  and  does  not  hold 
that  degree,  we  have  no  pleasant  epithet.  Fortu- 
nately, however,  'the  average'  has  no  real  existence. 
Every  one  is  an  individual,  with  an  independent 
value.  Yet  nothing  could  be  more  cruel  than  to  en- 
courage men  to  go  into  the  university  career,  if  they 
have  not  spirit  enough,  and  common  sense  enough, 
and  higher  intelligence  enough,  to  secure  three  years 
of  special,  unimpeded  study  under  able  instruction, 
after  they  have  learned  as  much  as  an  undergradu- 
ate knows  of  any  subject  at  the  end  of  his  Senior 
year.  The  exceptional  case,  of  which  we  hear  more 
than  its  exceptional  nature  warrants,  will  not  lack 
recognition  in  the  American  college.  What  lacks 
recognition  is  the  general  truth  that  a  man  never 
can  know  too  much  about  the  subject  he  is  teaching. 
The  average  American  does  not  believe  in  first-hand 
knowledge  outside  the  realm  of  what  he  can  touch 
and  see.  Neither  did  the  Englishman — before  the 
recent  upheaval.  "What  lacks  recognition  is  the  truth 
that  you  cannot  take  the  right  attitude  to  a  study, 
nor  have  the  right  sentiments  about  it,  if  you  have 
not  studied  the  subject  for  yourself  from  every  angle. 
But  why  must  one  defend  truths  that  are  axiomatic? 
In  no  other  civilized  country  would  the  obvious  in- 


232  WAYS  OF  IMPROVING  SCHOLARSHIP 

terrelation  of  knowledge  and  power,  training  and 
success,  normal  procedure  and  character,  be  seriously 
questioned. 

Nor,  to  dwell  upon  a  matter  alluded  to  before,  is 
there  any  reason  for  admitting  instructors  to  the 
faculty  on  terms  essentially  different  from  those  on 
which  we  admit  students  to  the  university.  We  have 
specific  requirements  for  the  entering  Freshman. 
These  requirements  might  be  more  simple  and  rigor- 
ous, and  there  is  a  movement  on  foot  to  make  them 
so;  they  at  least  suggest  that  something  definite 
should  be  expected  of  those  whom  we  might  call  en- 
tering instructors.  At  present  we  have  our  choice 
between  requiring  the  doctoral  degree  of  them,  or 
something  short  of  it — not  something  different. 

As  for  scholarly  publication,  in  the  long  run  it  is 
the  sign  of  a  deep,  abiding  interest  in  one's  subject, 
and  of  a  desire  for  the  welfare  of  humanity;  the 
abuse  of  it  for  purposes  of  self-advertisement  affords 
no  basis  for  argument  against  the  thing  itself.  In 
an  institution  where  the  administrative  officers  let  it 
be  known  that  the  instructor  or  assistant  professor 
who  does  not  publish  need  not  hope  for  advance- 
ment, there  may  be,  together  with  much  useful  in- 
vestigation, a  certain  amount  of  mere  mechanical 
research  and  forced  publication,  but  the  evil  is  far 
outweighed  by  the  good.  Even  the  man  who  engages 
in  research  under  compulsion  is  more  likely  than 
not  ere  long  to  become  interested  in  what  he  is  doing. 
In  the  few  American  universities  where  this  policy 
is  strictly  adhered  to,  the  results  have  been  alto- 


SCHOLAELY  PUBLICATION  233 

gether  satisfactory.  There  is  no  danger  of  excessive 
productivity  in  scholarship.  Every  one  who  is  famil- 
iar with  the  educational  institutions  of  Europe  must 
perceive  that  there  are  far  too  many  teachers  in  our 
American  universities  who  are  not  playing  the  game 
they  have  affected  to  enter — ^the  game  they  have 
chosen  for  the  one  life  that  has  been  vouchsafed  to 
them.  They  have  embarked  upon  a  career  which  in 
our  time  calls  for  several  sorts  of  activity;  yet 
through  timidity  and  indolence,  partly  due  to  lack 
of  training,  and  through  lack  of  incentive,  they  fail 
in  one  essential  respect ;  and  they  know  it.  The  man 
who  honestly  looks  into  his  own  heart  will  say:  *I 
am  aware  that  whenever  I  cease  to  study  and  pub- 
lish, my  vitality  as  a  teacher  diminishes,  and  I  do 
not  respect  myself  when  I  am  not  playing  the  game.' 
We  must  disabuse  ourselves  of  any  belief  to  the 
contrary.  There  is  little  hope  for  the  improvement 
of  American  scholarship  so  long  as  people  deceive 
themselves,  pretending  that  on  the  whole  the  best 
scholars  are  not  the  best  teachers — an  error  that  is 
not  borne  out  by  the  facts. 

III.    A  Reform  through  the  Reduction  op  Numbers 

The  schools  of  antiquity,  founded  by  Plato  and  Aris- 
totle, and  continued  by  their  successors,  existed  for  the 
select  few  and  not  for  the  many.  They  did  not  exist 
for  the  select  few  in  the  sense  that  the  students'  came 
from  any  particular  class  of  society,  or  constituted  a 
social  elite ;  no  one'  was  denied  admittance  so  long  as 


234  WATS  OF  IMPROVING  SOHOLABSHIP 

he  possessed  great  mental  capacity.  What  counted  was 
the  desire  for  knowledge  and  the  ability  to  acquire  it. 
The  few,  the  intellectual  aristocracy,  were  sifted  from 
the  many.  In  the  later  Middle  Ages,  the  universities 
which  arose  in  Italy  and  France,  and,  in  the  early 
Kenaissance,  the  universities  which  arose  in  Germany 
and  England  under  the  influence  of  the  Italian  and 
French  foundations,  were  again  for  the  few  and  not 
for  the  many ;  though  often  attended  by  great  numbers 
of  students,  they,  again,  made  possible  the  existence 
of  an  intellectual  aristocracy  drawn — ^by  a  process  of 
natural  selection,  sifted — from  the  population  as  a 
whole.  The  individual  teacher  sometimes  gloried  in 
the  size  of  his  following  of  pupils,  though  in  general 
he  took  pride  rather  in  the  development  of  some  few 
leading  minds,  or  of  two  or  three,  or  perhaps  one.  The 
size  of  the  university,  the  attendance  at  any  one  place, 
was  a  matter  of  no  special  significance. 

In  this  country,  the  desire  for  numbers  and  external 
superiority  has  resulted  in  a  very  unsatisfactory  con- 
dition. Of  course  the  number  of  students  in  all  the 
colleges  and  universities  of  America  constitutes  but  a 
small  proportion  of  the  population  as  a  whole.  Never- 
theless, the  men  and  women  in  attendance  at  these 
institutions  do  not  consist  of  the  select  few ;  they  do 
not  make  up  an  aristocracy  of  intellect ;  they  are  mere 
samples  of  the  many.  The  method  and  means  of  sort- 
ing are  so  inadequate  or  so  lax  that  the  university  has 
become  a  place  where  the  man  of  average  capacity 
feels  at  home.  The  indifference  or  derision  shown  by 
the  mass  of  university  students  toward  those  who, 


THE  EEDUCTION  OF  NUMBERS  235 

through  intellectual  superiority  coupled  with  diligence, 
secure  an  election  to  the  society  of  Phi  Beta  Kappa, 
or  to  other  honorary  groups,  is  very  significant.  A 
man  comes  to  a  particular  university  because  his  father 
or  his  uncle  once  was  a  student  there ;  or  because  his 
brother  belonged  to  such  and  such  a  fraternity  there ; 
or  because  he  has  reason  to  hope  that  he  will  become 
a  member  of  the  football  or  the  baseball  team.  Or  he 
comes  because  he  expects  definite  training  for  a  par- 
ticular vocation.  "With  the  exception  of  those  of  for- 
eign birth  or  blood — for  example,  the  children  of 
Hebrew  or  Russian  parents — almost  no  students  come 
with  the  expectation  of  attaining  eminence  in  the  con- 
cerns of  the  mind. 

With  the  growth  of  numbers  and  the  decline  of  intel- 
lectual standards  it  has  eome  about  that  a  large  pro- 
portion of  the  actual  teaching  is  done  by  underpaid 
and  inexperienced  instructors  and  assistants,  who 
never  will  rise  to  a  commanding  height  in  this  profes- 
sion. As  in  the  preparatory  school,  so  in  the  univer- 
sity, many  of  the  teachers  have  not  the  persistence  to 
learn  their  craft.  Yesterday  the  man  was  clerk  in  a 
bank ;  to-day  he  is  instructor  in  a  college ;  to-morrow 
he  will  be  an  insurance-agent,  or  an  amateur  farmer, 
or  he  will  accept  a  position  with  a  publisher  to  write 
letters  urging  the  adoption  of  text-books  for  classes  in 
English  composition.  The  result  is  that,  instead  of 
being  in  the  hands  of  talented,  enthusiastic,  well-dis- 
ciplined masters,  far  too  many  classes  are  in  the  situa- 
tion of  bodies  undergoing  dissection  at  the  hands  of 
medical  students  in  the  first  year  of  anatomy. 


236    WAYS  OF  IMPROVING  SCHOLARSHIP 

I  may  illustrate  these  strictures  with  the  gist  of  a 
valuable  report  made  ten  years  ago  by  the  dean  of  the 
graduate  school  in  an  American  university.  It  is  not 
desirable  to  specify  the  particular  institution,  condi- 
tions there  having  slightly  altered  for  the  better  in  the 
mean  time.  Yet  nowhere  have  they  altered  to  such  an 
extent  as  to  rob  the  report  of  significance ;  it  represents 
the  general  drift  of  university  education  in  America 
for  twenty  years  or  more  before  the  recent  war ;  since 
then,  the  value  of  salaries  has  declined,  and  casual 
increase  of  stipends  here  and  there  has  by  no  means 
restored  their  purchasing  power. 

According  to  the  report,  it  is  often  said  that  the  only 
limit  to  the  growth  of  a  university,  even  without  an 
increase  in  its  endowment,  is  the  one  set  by  the 
capacity  of  its  class-rooms  and  laboratories.  The 
figures  show  that  the  university  in  question  has  nearly 
reached  the  point  where  that  statement  is  justified. 
Should  the  present  tendency  continue,  and  the  average 
salary  of  all  teachers — professors,  assistant  professors, 
instructors,  and  assistants — fall  from  $1190  to  $1070, 
the  salary  of  each  additional  teacher  will  be  paid  by 
the  tuition  of  the  additional  students  who  make  his 
presence  necessary.  But  the  growth  of  the  university 
will  necessitate  a  further  decrease  in  the  relative  num- 
ber of  professors  and  assistant  professors,  and  an  in- 
crease in  that  of  instructors  and  assistants.  If  the 
percentage  had  remained  the  same  for  the  preceding 
ten  years,  the  university  would  now  have  233  profes- 
sors instead  of  189.  Meanwhile  an  increase  in  the 
number  of  undergraduates  adds  to  the  burden  of 


NUMBERS  AND  ENDOWMENT  237 

administrative  work,  which  falls  upon  the  permanent 
members  of  the  faculty,  to  the  detriment  of  advanced 
study  and  research.  The  decrease  in  the  relative  num- 
ber of  graduate  students  in  the  past  ten  years  is  almost 
exactly  the  same  as  the  decrease  in  the  percentage  of 
professors  and  assistant  professors.  A  further  in- 
crease in  the  amount  of  undergraduate  instruction  will 
necessitate  additional  buildings  and  an  expansion  of 
material  equipment.  Without  additional  endowment 
there  will  necessarily  be  less  pecuniary  support  for 
graduate  study,  and  a  general  lowering  of  the  standard 
of  instruction  throughout  the  university.  If  an  in- 
creased endowment  for  material  growth  should  be 
obtained,  we  may  still  ask  whether  a  university  in 
which  the  average  salary  for  teachers  is  $1070,  and 
in  which  nearly  half  the  instruction  is  in  the  hands 
of  temporary  assistants  with  a  salary  of  $500  or  less, 
is  the  type  of  institution  we  are  willing  to  accept  as 
our  ideal.  One  might  do  more  for  the  cause  of  educa- 
tion by  aiming  to  make  one's  institution  the  best  in 
the  country,  rather  than  the  largest. 

A  few  of  our  universities  are  in  better  case  than 
the  one  for  which  this  report  was  made ;  more,  prob- 
ably, in  worse;  the  average  doubtless  in  pretty  much 
the  situation  here  described.  Better  or  worse  as  the 
case  may  be,  virtually  every  one  of  them  is,  so  to 
speak,  sttident-poor,  and  instructor-poor — ^as  we  call  a 
man  'land-poor'  when  he  has  thousands  of  acres,  and 
can  barely  pay  the  taxes.  In  our  higher  education,  we 
have  reversed  the  sentence  of  the  New  Testament: 
'Many  are  called,  but  few  are  chosen.'     Our  institu- 


WAYS  OF  IMPROVING  SOHOLABSHIP 

tions  of  higher  learning  accept  the  many,  and  ignore 
the  few  who  have  a  right  to  be  there.  With  a  large 
actual  income,  or  at  all  events  with  income  enough  to 
do  certain  things  well,  each  and  every  university  is 
more  or  less  impecunious.  If  we  are  to  have  better 
scholarship,  drastic  measures  must  be  taken  to  make 
our  relatively  small  means  relatively  great.  We  must 
either  secure  (not  hope  for)  more  money,  or  we  must 
have  fewer  students,  or,  far  better,  we  must  have  more 
money  and  fewer  students.  'Turn  it  how  you  will, 
manipulate  it  as  you  will,  the  few,  as  Cardinal  New- 
man well  says,  can  never  mean  the  many. '  ^ 

In  A  Letter  to  a  Noble  Lord,  Edmund  Burke  draws 
the  rather  obvious  distinction  between  parsimony 
and  economy.  However  obvious  it  may  be,  it  has 
escaped  practical  application  by  the  practical  Ameri- 
can people  in  the  realm  of  university  finance : 

*It  may  be  new  to  his  grace,  but  I  beg  leave  to  tell 
him  that  mere  parsimony  is  not  economy.  It  is  separ- 
able in  theory  from  it ;  and  in  fact  it  may,  or  it  may 
not,  be  a  part  of  economy,  according  to  circumstances. 
Expense,  and  great  expense,  may  be  an  essential 
part  in  true  economy.  If  parsimony  were  to  be  con- 
sidered as  one  of  the  kinds  of  that  virtue,  there  is, 
however,  another  and  a  higher  economy.  Economy 
is  a  distributive  virtue,  and  consists,  not  in  saving, 
but  in  selection.  Parsimony  requires  no  providence, 
no  sagacity,  no  powers  of  combination,  no  compari- 
son, no  judgment.  Mere  instinct,  and  that  not  an 
instinct  of  the  noblest  kind,  may  produce  this  false 
economy    in    perfection.      The    other    economy    has 

*  Matthew  Arn&ld,  Numbers,  or  The  Majority  and  the  Bern- 
nant,  in  Discourses  in  America,  1885,  p.  6. 


AN  ENDOWED  PEESS  239 

larger  views.  It  demands  a  discriminating  judg- 
ment, and  a  firm,  sagacious  mind.  It  shuts  one  door 
to  impudent  importunity,  only  to  open  another^  and 
a  wider,  to  unp resuming  merit.'  ^ 

IV.  An  Endowed  Press  for  the  Advancement 
OF  Learning 

In  the  recent  European  crisis,  and  the  troubles 
that  still  continue,  humane  scholarship  abroad  has 
been  everywhere  depressed,  and  in  some  parts  utterly 
paralyzed.  The  great  English  and  Continental  uni- 
versities have  been  well-nigh  empty  of  students; 
groups  of  masterly  teachers  have  been  dispersed; 
and  many  young  men  who  would  have  been  leaders 
in  the  promotion  of  learning  are  now  lifelong  inva- 
lids, or  are  in  their  graves.  Printing-presses  have 
stopped,  the  publication  of  scholarly  works  has 
dwindled,  and  learned  periodicals  are  threatened 
with  extinction.  Between  the  declaration  of  war 
and  December  31,  1914,  two  hundred  and  twenty 
men  from  the  Oxford  Press  had  joined  the  British 
army.  Such  being  the  state  of  affairs  in  Europe,  a 
great  opportunity,  and  a  momentous  responsibility, 
confront  the  United  States  of  America;  upon  our 
scholars,  and  upon  those  who  maintain  them,  are 
devolving,  to  an  extent  which  no  one  could  have  fore- 
seen, the  future  of  liberal  learning  throughout  the 
world.  It  is  manifestly  our  part  to  do  more  than 
ever    before    for    learning    while    scholarship    lan- 

1  The  WorTcs  of  Edmund  Burlce  (World 's  Classics,  Oxford 
Press)  6.  53-4. 


240  WAYS  OF  IMPROVING  SCHOLAESHIP 

guishes  abroad;  and,  now  that  the  war  is  over,  we 
have  an  essential  function  to  perform  in  restoring 
unity  in  the  higher  life  of  nations. 

But  at  all  times  two  main  problems  beset  the 
higher,  humane  scholarship  in  America.  First,  there 
is  the  question  (which  has  not  been  properly  solved) 
of  the  ordinary  expenses  of  scholars  as  men — how 
are  they  to  be  supported  in  freedom  from  anxiety 
for  the  morrow,  so  that  they  may  possess  the  re- 
quisite courage  and  free  energy  for  their  special 
services  to  the  community  and  the  State?  Secondly, 
there  is  the  question  of  expense  connected  with  all 
research  and  publication  that  necessitate  pecuniary 
outlay,  and  promise  no  pecuniary  return  within  a 
lifetime,  or  involve  ultimate  loss;  for  in  America 
the  works  that  are  most  valuable  to  the  scholar  can- 
not be  supported  on  the  basis  of  sales.  Of  course, 
these  two  questions  are  interdependent,  since  the 
economy  of  a  scholar's  life  and  the  economy  of 
scholarship  are  one;  but  at  present  we  may  concern 
ourselves  with  the  second  question,  and  in  the  main 
with  one  side  of  that.  What  is  the  best  way  to  solve 
the  problem  of  publication? 

The  proposal  here  made  is  that  some  man  of  wealth, 
and  of  good  will  toward  the  nation  and  mankind,  be 
induced  to  endow  a  press  for  the  advancement,  through 
the  publication  of  meritorious  scholarly  works,  of  those 
branches  of  learning  which  are  most  clearly  essential 
to  American  culture,  and  which  are  properly  known 
as  the  humanities ;  let  there  be  an  establishment  upon 
American  soil  to  perform  in  this  country  the  service 


A  PEESS  FOR  THE  HUMANITIES  241 

which  that  greatest  of  European  agencies  for  enlight- 
enment, the  Clarendon  Press,  has  hitherto  performed 
in  England.  Specifically,  let  the  new  press  be  founded 
first  of  all  for  the  sake  of  scholarly  researches  and 
indispensable  works  of  reference  in  the  field  of  the 
vernacular — of  our  English  and  American  language 
and  literature ;  but  let  it  exist  also  for  similar  works 
in  fields  adjacent  and  disciplines  fundamental  to  this, 
such  as  the  Greek  and  Latin  languages  and  literatures, 
and,  among  other  modern  subjects,  the  Italian,  Span- 
ish, and  French ;  together  with  ancient  and  medieval 
history  and  philosophy.  Biblical  studies,  pure  mathe- 
matics, and  astronomy.  The  development  of  great 
publishing  concerns  in  Europe  shows  that  it  is  advis- 
able to  begin  with  publications  in  some  more  restricted 
field  of  knowledge  or  effort,  and  subsequently  to  ex- 
tend the  range  of  activities.  Thus  the  Clarendon  Press 
at  Oxford  began  by  specializing  in  the  printing  of  the 
Bible,  and  the  Cambridge  University  Press  with  the 
English  Prayer  Book.  Accordingly,  this  American 
University  Press  would  begin  by  caring  for  the  human- 
ities. 

Still  more  specifically,  such  a  press  could  take  up 
the  publication  of  works  like  those  now  to  be  sug- 
gested. The  works  of  a  number  of  important  authors 
have  never  been  properly  edited  as  a  whole;  among 
these  authors,  strange  as  it  may  seem,  are  Milton  and 
Burke.  But  an  endowed  press  might  well  engage  also 
in  publishing  lexicons  for  particular  periods  in  the 
history  of  the  English  language,  concordances  to  indi- 
vidual poets,  researches  into  secular  and  ecclesiastical 


242     WAYS  OF  IMPROVING  SCHOLARSHIP 

history,  studies  in  the  history  and  theory  of  poetry 
and  the  other  fine  arts,  and  facsimiles  of  ancient  and 
medigeval  manuscripts;  and  in  reprinting  valuable 
early  books  which  are  now  in  private  collections,  or 
are  otherwise  inaccessible  to  students. 

The  stress  here  laid  upon  English,  the  ancient 
classics,  and  Romance  languages  and  literatures,  is 
justified  upon  several  grounds.  First,  special  studies 
in  these  departments,  while  they  are  of  the  utmost 
importance  to  the  culture  of  our  nation  in  view  of 
its  antecedents,  are  likely  to  be,  as  they  have  been, 
neglected  in  comparison  with  studies  in  agriculture, 
the  mechanic  arts,  and  the  like.  It  is  difiicult  for 
many,  though  not  all,  of  those  who  are  engaged  in 
practical  affairs  to  discern  the  advantage  of  the  higher 
cultivation  of  humane  studies  to  the  country  at  large ; 
and  it  is  therefore  quite  necessary  that  such  studies 
should  not  depend  for  their  maintenance  upon  the 
opinion  of  the  many. 

Secondly,  it  is  generally  conceded  that  the  Church, 
or  at  any  rate  the  evangelical  denominations,  some 
time  ago  began  to  lose  the  educational  influence  which 
the  Protestant  organizations  once  possessed.  Accord- 
ingly, humane  scholarship,  which  has  always  been 
closely  allied  with  the  Christian  religion,  should  now 
be  promoted  in  every  conceivable  way  as  an  indirect 
but  powerful  instrument  in  upholding  the  spiritual 
life  of  the  nation. 

Thirdly,  it  must  be  clear  to  an  unbiased  observer 
that,  through  a  period  of  years  which  we  hope  is  now 
ending,  the  sums  of  money  which  have  been  available 


PURE  SCHOLARSHIP  IS  NEEDY  243 

in  this  country  for  the  advancement  of  research  in 
medicine  and  applied  science,  while  not  unduly  large 
in  themselves,  have  been  out  of  proportion  to  the 
meagre  sums  obtainable  for  the  welfare  of  humane 
studies.  Thus  we  have  millions  of  dollars  donated  to 
aid  in  the  discovery  of  a  cure  for  cancer;  expensive 
laboratories  for  research  in  chemistry,  in  physics — 
in  almost  every  field  where  investigation  may  con- 
tribute to  bodily  health  and  comfort,  or  to  ease  of 
transportation  and  communication  for  the  ends  of 
commerce.  But  bodily  health  and  the  like,  though  we 
may  sometimes  regard  them  as  good  things  in  them- 
selves, do,  after  all,  become  really  valuable  only  when 
they  make  possible  a  life  that  is  higher  than  that  of 
mere  animal  existence.  Consequently,  provision  must 
be  made  for  the  human  activities  without  which  the 
health  and  comfort  of  the  body  are  futile.  Such  a 
press  as  we  have  been  describing  would  do  more  to 
stimulate  these  activities  than  any  other  imaginable 
device. 

It  should  be  added  that,  in  America  at  the  present 
time,  pure  science  in  physics,  chemistry,  and  the  like, 
fares  better  than  pure  mathematics,  and  that  the 
sciences  which  are  not  strictly  humane  fare  better 
than  pure  scholarship.  The  Carnegie  Institution  of 
Washington,  it  is  true,  contrary  to  the  usual  opinion, 
has  not  entirely  lost  sight  of  the  humanities ;  see,  for 
example,  the  concordances  of  Spenser,  Keats,  and 
Horace,  in  its  list  of  publications.  Yet  the  experience 
of  that  Institution  itself  shows  the  need  of  an  en- 
dowed press  for  the  exclusive  end  we  are  discussing. 


244       WAYS  OF  impro^t:ng  scholarship 

In  the  year  1916  tlie  Carnegie  Institution  had  an  in- 
come of  but  $50,000  for  publications  of  all  sorts.  An 
income  of  several  times  that  amount  for  subsidizing 
publications  in  humane  scholarship  would  not  be  more 
than  enough  to  start  with,  in  the  enterprise  here  recom- 
mended. The  sum  of  £5,000  was  contributed  to  the 
Clarendon  Press  by  the  Worshipful  Company  of  Gold- 
smiths towards  the  production  of  Volume  VI  (con- 
taining the  lettersi  L,  M,  and  N)  of  the  great  Oxford 
Dictionary  of  the  English  Language ;  this  sum,  nearly 
one-half  the  said  income  of  the  Carnegie  Institution, 
did  not  suffice,  it  would  seem,  for  the  cost  of  that 
single  volume — one  volume  out  of  ten. 

One  cogent  reason  for  the  establishment  of  a  press 
with  ample  funds  for  scholarly  undertakings  is  the 
high  cost  of  superior  printing  in  this  country.  Under 
normal  conditions  in  England  the  price  of  high-grade 
printer's  composition  may  be  estimated  at  one-half  the 
price  in  America;  and  good  printing  is  as  cheap  or 
cheaper  on  the  Continent.  This  assertion  is  based 
upon  a  comparison  of  the  estimates  submitted  by  Eng- 
lish, Continental,  and  American  firms  for  scholarly 
works  that  have  come  under  the  immediate  notice  of 
the  present  writer ;  it  is  borne  out  by  the  testimony  of 
American  publishers,  who  confess  that  they  dare  not 
venture  in  such  enterprises  with  the  freedom  ordi- 
narily shown  by  publishing-houses  in  Great  Britain 
and  Germany.  In  Germany,  before  the  war,  humane 
scholarship  was  on  a  solid  pecuniary  basis,  the  cost  of 
printing  being  low,  and  good  scholars  being  numerous 
enough  to  create  an  adequate  demand  for  published 


MEAGRE  INCOMES  OF  SCHOLARS  245 

investigations  of  a  non-popular  sort;  in  England  the 
inherited  or  accumulated'  wealth  of  the  great  univer- 
sity presses,  and  of  a  few  long-established  private  con- 
cerns, has  encouraged  scholarly  publication  in  a  high 
degree.  Furthermore,  in  both  England  and  Germany 
the  pecuniary  rewards  of  the  scholarly  life  are  greater 
than  in  this  country;  university  salaries  are  larger, 
and  living  expenses  (in  time  of  peace)  are  lower;  and 
hence  the  scholar  himself  has  on  occasion  been  able  to 
supply  a  subvention  for  a  non-popular  work  which  he 
wished  to  give  to  the  world  for  the  sake  of  a  small 
number  of  his  fellows  whose  need  of  it  weis  great. 

In  America  the  poverty  of  scholars  is  proverbial. 
Nine  out  of  ten  students  who  enroll  for  the  humani- 
ties in  the  graduate  school  are  poor;  and  when  they 
reach  the  goal  of  their  efforts,  and  become,  let  us 
say,  university  professors,  their  incomes  are  so  poor 
as  to  excite  the  commiseration  of  their  brethren  in 
the  universities  of  Europe.  Of  course,  the  main  re- 
wards of  the  scholarly  life  are  not  pecuniary.  And 
it  is  a  pernicious  state  of  affairs  when  young  men 
and  women  are  imbued  with  the  notion  that,  as 
special  students,  they  deserve  to  be  paid— in  'schol- 
arships' and  'fellowships';  it  is  a  notion  we  fre- 
quently observe  in  the  graduate  school.  They  should 
not  be  'paid' — and  yet  scholarship  must  be  sup- 
ported, and  the  scholar  must  be  free  from  worldly 
care.  Similarly,  the  ripe  productive  scholar  must 
not  expect  to  be  paid  in  full,  with  coin,  for  his  in- 
vestigations— and  yet  scholarly  research  must  be 
supported,  and  scholarly  publication,  not  merely 
17 


246  WAYS  OF  IMPROVING  SCHOLARSHIP 

made  possible,  but  directly  encouraged.  So  it  has 
always  been  when  humane  scholarship  has  flourished. 
So  it  was  in  Greece  when  the  investigations  of 
Aristotle  were  aided  by  the  princely  Alexander. 
So  it  was  at  Alexandria  under  the  Ptolemies.  So 
it  was  in  the  Renaissance,  when  modem  scholarship 
began  in  the  Italian  cities  under  the  protection  and 
encouragement  of  the  ruling  houses  and  certain  of 
the  popes.  And  so  will  it  always  be.  So  must  it  be 
in  America,  where,  under  the  conditions  of  a  de- 
mocracy, the  State  will  tend  to  advance  the  interests 
of  the  common  schools,  of  industrial  education,  and 
of  agriculture;  and  where  the  higher  scholarship, 
if  it  is  to  thrive  at  all,  must  depend  upon  judicious 
but  ample,  nay  generous,  benefactions  from  men  of 
wealth  and  insight. 

Here  follow  a  number  of  suggestions  respecting 
the  organization  and  activity  of  the  proposed  uni- 
versity press. 

The  endowment  for  the  publication  of  books 
should  be  proportionately  very  large — five  times  the 
amount  of  endowment  for  the  salaries  of  oflBcers, 
clerical  assistance,  and  the  like,  for  the  necessary 
buildings,  and  for  the  machinery  of  manufacture. 
But  the  press  should  have  funds  enough  for  the  best 
material  equipment,  for  the  employment  of  the  best 
skilled  workmen,  and  for  the  payment  of  experts 
whose  advice  might  from  time  to  time  be  sought  out- 
side the  immediate  staff. 


SUGGESTIONS  FOR  A  PRESS  247 

The  press  should  make  a  point  of  developing  the 
taste  of  the  country  in  matters  of  typography,  paper, 
and  binding. 

Those  who  were  called  upon  to  organize  the  press 
would  do  well  to  study  the  history  of  the  great 
Italian  publishing-houses  in  the  Renaissance,  and  of 
their  followers  in  other  lands,  and  the  history,  organ- 
ization, and  present  methods  of  the  Clarendon  Press, 
and,  after  that,  the  methods  of  other  university 
presses,  including  those  connected  with  Yale  Uni- 
versity and  the  University  of  Chicago. 

Two  kinds  of  experts  would  be  needed  in  working 
out  the  details  of  organization — men  of  experience 
in  finance,  and  a  number  of  superior  productive 
scholars.  The  experts  on  the  scholarly  side  should, 
above  all,  not  be  drawn  from  the  class  of  university 
professors  who  have  produced  little  or  nothing  of  a 
scholarly  sort.  They  should  be  known  for  lives  of 
industry  in  linguistic,  literary,  and  historical  re- 
search. 

From  these  business  men  and  these  scholars  there 
should  be  selected  a  business  head  or  president,  a 
secretary  or  editor,  and  an  advisory  board. 

The  press  should  be  ready  to  accept  works  of  merit 
from  any  source,  and  in  time  might  itself  originate 
them.  Its  first  publications  should  be  of  the  highest 
quality  and  importance,  irrespective  of  the  source. 
But  in  general  it  might  aim  to  provide  a  channel  for 


248  WAYS  OF  IMPROVING  SOHOLAESHIP 

those  American  universities  and  colleges  of  high 
rank  that  have  no  adequate  outlet  for  the  publica- 
tions of  their  scholars.  In  time  it  might  become  the 
centre  of  organization  for  all,  or  many,  of  the  par- 
ticular university  presses  throughout  the  country. 

The  most  important  scholarly  press  in  the  world 
has  been  several  times  mentioned  in  the  foregoing 
paragraphs — the  Clarendon  Press,  at  Oxford,  Eng- 
land. It  derives  its  name  from  Edward  Hyde,  Earl 
of  Clarendon,  1608-1674,  who  contributed  to  the 
foundation.  The  history  of  that  press  serves  to  indi- 
cate how  a  man  of  wealth  and  public  spirit  could 
perpetuate  his  good  name,  and  confer  an  incalcu- 
lably great  benefit  upon  the  higher  life  of  our  own 
nation,  by  providing  the  funds  for  a  press  that  should 
rival  the  one  at  Oxford. 


XIII 

THE  DOCTORAL  DEGREE  IN 
ENGLISH^ 

*-r-^-rHEN  found,  make  a  note  of,'  advises  Cap- 
YV       *^^^    Cuttle   in   the   fifteenth    chapter   of 
Domhey  and  Son.    The  counsel  of  the  aged  scholar 
Routh  was  similar. 

*  "Every  studious  man,"  '  said  Burgon  to  Routh 
(aged  92),  '  "in  the  course  of  a  long  and  thoughtful 
life,  has  had  occasion  to  experience  the  special  value 
of  some  one  axiom  or  precept.  Would  you  mind 
giving  me  the  benefit  of  such  a  word  of  advice?" 
...  He  bade  me  explain — evidently  to  gain  time. 
I  quoted  an  instance.  He  nodded  and  looked 
thoughtful.  Presently  he  brightened  up,  and  said: 
"I  think,  sir,  since  you  care  for  the  advice  of  an  old 
man,  sir,  you  will  find  it  a  very  good  practice" — 
here  he  looked  me  archly  in  the  face — "always  to 
verify  your  references,  sir ! "  '  ^ 

A  writer  in  the  Nation,  commenting  upon  the 
doctoral  degree  in  English,  quotes  with  a  slight  in- 
accuracy a  passage,  on  the  aim  of  literary  study, 
which  (so  he  says)  may  serve  *as  the  creed  of  the 

*  This  article  first  appeared  with  the  title  (not  chosen  by  the 
writer),  *  Scholarship  and  Humanism,'  in  the  Nation  108.  911- 
913  (New  York,  June  7,  1919),  and  is  here  reprinted  with  the 
kind  comseint  of  the  editor.  The  principal  changes  occur  at  the 
beginning  of  the  article. 

"  Burgon,  Lives  of  Twelve  Good  Men,  1891,  p.  38. 
249 


250  THE  DOCTORAL  DEGEEE  IN  ENGLISH 

bmnjanist.'^  The  quotation  may  as  well  be  ^ven 
correctly : 

,*What,  now,  is  the  aim  of  literary  study?  Since 
literature  is  a  liberal  art,  its  function  must  be  in 
some  way  connected  with  liberty;  and  since  the  study 
of  literature  belongs  among  the  humanities,  it  must, 
if  properly  pursued,  tend  to  make  the  student  more 
humane;  that  is,  more  thoughtful,  more  reverent, 
and  more  fearless — more  wise,  sympathetic,  and  just. 
As  a  liberal  art,  poetry  helps  to  free  us  from  the 
slavery  of  fear;  as  a  humane  art,  it  disentangles  us 
from  the  bestial  part  of  our  natures,  and  renders  us 
more  like  the  best  and  happiest,  the  most  typical, 
men.' 

It  would  seem  from  the  context  in  the  Nation  that 
the  sentiments  were  drawn  from  the  writings  of 
Wordsworth ;  but  in  reality  the  passage  is  mine,  and 
may  be  found  preceding  an  authentic  quotation  from 
Wordsworth  on  page  55  of  my  Methods  and  Aims  in 
the  Study  of  Literature — a  volume  the  general  tend- 
ency of  which  is  not  in  accord  with  the  drift  of  the 
article  by  our  alleged  'humanist.' 

Since  my  creed,  or  a  part  of  it,  has  the  sanction 
of  this  amiable  writer,  and  is  accepted  by  him  as  a 
basic  ideal  for  the  training  of  teachers  of  English, 
it  seems  proper  to  look  into  his  subsidiary  conten- 
tions; and  the  more  so  because  his  utterances  echo 
what  a  number  of  well-intentioned  persons  of  late 
have  been  thinking  or  saying,  and  will  evoke  the  ap- 
plause of  men  who,  through  an  imperfect  induction 

1  Mr.  Norman  Foerster,  in  the  Nation,  May  10,  1919,  pp.  747- 
750. 


A  MISTAKEN    «  HUMANIST  '  251 

into  scholarship,  cannot  perceive  the  eternal  bond 
subsisting  between  scholarly  (that  is,  scientific)  in- 
vestigation and  the  ennoblement  of  humane  learn- 
ing. 

His  main  positions,  subsidiary  to  his  'creed,'  are 
these.  There  is  a  class  of  men  called  investigators, 
who  control  the  studies  leading  to  the  doctoral  de- 
gree, and  compel  the  graduate  student  in  English  to 
busy  himself  with  the  Middle  Ages,  and  with  the 
earlier  stages  of  the  language,  to  the  neglect,  on  the 
one  hand,  of  modern  literature,  and,  on  the  other,  of 
those  classical  studies  which  are  known  as  the  hu- 
manities. Since  English  literature  is  said  to  begin 
with  Chaucer,  and  since  Chaucer  apparently  belongs 
to  the  Renaissance  rather  than  to  the  Middle  Ages, 
we  may  set  aside  the  study  of  Old  English,  and  of 
mediaeval  sources,  as  not  pertinent  to  the  needs  of 
the  day.  Above  all,  we  may  omit  mediaeval  studies 
from  the  course  of  the  graduate  student  who  prom- 
ises to  be  a  man  of  literary  taste,  and  whose  finer 
aspirations  may  be  killed  by  forced  preoccupation 
with  research.  An  opportunity  should  be  given  to 
this  kind  of  student  to  write  a  dissertation  upon  some 
topic  that  does  not  require  investigation  of  the  sort 
hitherto  expected  of  all  candidates  for  the  doctoral 
degree.  (No  clear  conception  appears  regarding  the 
type  of  subject  upon  which  he  actually  should  write ; 
yet  the  inference  is  legitimate  that  he  may  substitute 
for  the  results  of  investigation  his  own  chance  re- 
action to  a  modern  author,  or  his  own  combination  of 
the  thoughts  of  others  upon  some  literary  question 


252  THE  DOCTOEAL  DEGREE  IN  ENGLISH 

that  has  awakened  his  interest,  or  even  that  he  might 
submit  a  specimen  of  his  own  creation,  spun  from 
his  inner  consciousness,  in  the  way  of  literary  art.) 
In  any  case,  it  is  held,  the  dissertation  should  be 
original,  should  constitute  the  most  weighty  part  of 
his  work  for  the  degree,  and  should  not  be  a  piece  of 
useless  'German'  scholarship. 

With  as  many  of  these  positions  as  are  half-truths 
the  man  of  sense  will  find  himself  half-way  in  agree- 
ment. One  is  justified  in  deploring  the  excessive 
over-emphasis  (where  it  really  exists)  upon  linguis- 
tics, for  those  who  are  not  to  give  their  lives  to 
linguistic  research;  the  study  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
and  of  the  classics,  too,  where  that  study  is  unre- 
lated to  the  inner  life  of  the  present;  the  direction 
of  research,  and  the  pursuit  of  it,  by  those  who  lack 
perspective;  the  acquisition  of  the  doctoral  degree 
in  English  by  men  who  cannot  develop  a  tolerable 
English  style;  and  the  inferior  quality  of  some  of 
the  dissertations  that  are  accepted  by  one  or  another 
university. 

If  our  amiable  'humanist'  spoke  for  himself  alone, 
there  would  be  no  need  of  assailing  his  positions  in 
so  far  as  they  are  not  tenable.  But  he  has  made 
himself  the  mouthpiece  for  a  number  of  critics  who 
have  not  thought  out  the  problem  to  be  faced  by  the 
teacher  of  special  students  in  English,  and  who 
nevertheless  are  outspoken  in  denouncing  recent 
methods  of  advanced  study.  It  is  therefore  desir- 
able to  consider  the  views  which  he  represents,  and 
the  subject  upon  which  he  has  written. 


A   FALSE   DISTINCTION  253 

First  of  all,  he  makes  a  distinction  between  the 
dilettante,  the  investigator,  and  the  humanist.  But 
the  distinction  is  false.  The  great  investigators  in 
language  and  literature  have  been  humanists,  and  the 
great  humanists  have  been  systematic  scholars  and  in- 
vestigators ;  examples  readily  suggest  themselves,  from 
Dante  and  Petrarch  down  to  Boeckh  and  Ten  Brink 
and  Gaston  Paris,  and  the  leading  Americau  scholars 
of  our  own  day.  For  clarity  of  thought  we  need  an 
Aristotelian  distinction  embracing  a  desirable  mean 
and  two  undesirable  extremes,  the  one  more  undesir- 
able than  the  other — thus :  (1)  the  dilettante,  or  senti- 
mentalist; (2)  the  pedant;  (3)  the  scholar,  represent- 
ing the  golden  mean — the  investigating  humanist.  Of 
the  vicious  extremes,  the  sentimentalist,  possessing  a 
naive  or  a  sophistical  eloquence,  or  a  specious  show 
of  breadth,  yet  deficient  in  scientific  curiosity,  in  exact 
knowledge,  and  in  a  real  power  of  generalization,  will 
be  more  acceptable  to  the  crowd.  The  pedant  may  be 
useful,  at  least  to  the  investigating  humanist ;  for  the 
pedant  will  hew  wood  and  draw  water,  and  something 
may  be  done  with  what  he  collects. 

Whence  comes  the  notion  that  scientific  research  is 
not  humane,  or  that  there  is  any  kind  of  study,  ration- 
ally conducted,  that  is  not  scientific?  Certainly  not 
from  an  examination  of  the  lives  and  activities  of  in- 
quiring men.  Plato  was  the  central  figure  of  a  group 
of  scientists  and  scholars.^  Aristotle,  whose  place  as 
leader  in  the  study  of  poetry  and  rhetoric  is  still 

*  See  Hermann  Usener,  Organisation  der  wissenschaftlichen 
Arieit,  in  Vortriige  und  Aufsdtse,  1907,  pp.  69ff,,  esp,  pp.  82-4. 


254  THE  DOCTORAL  DEGREE  IN  ENGLISH 

secure,  was  a  biologist;  he,  too,  was  the  centre  of  a 
group,  some  of  whom  did  a  great  deal  of  intellectual 
hewing  of  wood'  and  drawing  of  water  for  him ;  while 
he  himself  never  disdained  to  share  in  these  funda- 
mental labors.  Nor  may  any  scholar,  'humanist,'  or 
doctor  of  philosophy  wisely  pass  a  lifetime  without 
often  undertaking  the  simplest  inductions.  As  to  lan- 
guage and  literature,  Dante  was  the  first  of  modern 
investigators — in  the  service  of  poetry.  And  Milton, 
great  poet  that  he  was,  eschewed  neither  the  humbler 
nor  the  higher  tasks  of  scholarship.  Not  to  speak  of 
his  collections  for  a  Latin  thesaurus,  or  to  track  him 
far  in  his  varied  scientific  and  scholarly  pursuits 
(every  one  of  them  reflected  in  his  poetry),  we  may 
note  his  geographical  work  on  Muscovy  as  an  example 
of  integration  from  original  sources.  And  his  History 
of  Britain  in  itself  is  a  reply  to  those  who  would 
exclude  the  period  of  Old  English  (the  writer  in  the 
Nation  calls  it  'Anglo-Saxon*  ^)  from  the  studies  nec- 
essary to  a  qualified  teacher  of  our  language  and  liter- 
ature. Was  Professor  Child  of  Harvard  less  human, 
or  more  human,  for  his  monumental  work  on  the  Eng- 
lish and  Scottish  ballads?  The  sentimentalist  comes 
short  of  full  humanity  in  not  recognizing  the  great 
human  law  of  obedience  to  the  facts.  The  pedant  (not 
the  humble  scholar,  fired  with  a  love  of  humanity,  and 
therefore  laying  the  lowliest  duties  upon  his  heart)  is 
inhuman  because  he  lacks  philosophy.  The  scholar, 
the  humane  investigator,  is  faithful  in  little  things, 

1  But  see  J.  R.  Green,  A  Short  History  of  the  English  People, 
chapter  1. 


THE  PRIMA  PHILOSOPHIA  255 

and,  with  the  help  of  that  prima  philosophia  recom- 
mended by  Francis  Bacon,  he  also  rises  to  an  elevation 
from  which  he  can  survey  details  in  a  right  perspective. 

Though  America  has  had  few  examples  of  industry 
to  match  the  unwearied  application  of  a  Littre  or  a 
Grimm,  a  Migne  or  a  Rohde,  or  many  another  Con- 
tinental scholar,  what  our  teaching  of  English  mainly 
wants,  if  I  mistake  not,  is  this  'first  philosophy'  that 
enables  a  man  to  rise  above  the  level  of  the  study  in 
which  he  engages,  so  as  to  relate  the  details  to  one 
another,  and  the  whole  to  the  scholarship  of  his  time 
and  all  times.  The  defect,  evinced  in  many  ways,  is 
notable  in  our  mishandling  of  general  terms,  such  as 
'science,'  'investigation,'  and  'philology,'  which  are 
employed  with  some  unconscious  restriction,  while  the 
writer  thinks  he  is  generalizing.  And  the  cure  ?  For 
the  aspirant  to  the  doctoral  degree  in  English  the  cure 
is  to  be  found  in  the  Encyklopddie  of  Boeckh  and  the 
systematic  treatises  on  the  study  of  language  and  liter- 
ature that  have  followed  it ;  the  work  is  better  known 
in  France  than  here,  and  to  the  humanists  than  to  the 
narrower  students  of  language. 

All  study  is  scientific,  is  methodical.  All  study  is 
investigation — proceeding  step  by  step.  The  first  step 
consists  in  observing  some  one  thing  in  particular. 
But  doubtless  too  many  of  those  who  assume  the  direc- 
tion of  graduate  students  are  in  haste  to  put  the  raw 
recruit  in  the  advance-guard  of  scholarship.  In  the 
first  year  the  recruit  should  learn  the  manual  of  arms 
— ^should  investigate  certain  things  that  have  already 
been  studied  to  advantage.    How  crude,  how  unfur- 


256         THE  DOCTORAL  DEGEEE  IN  ENGLISH 

nished,  he  often  is,  in  comparison  with  the  product 
of  a  French  lycee  or  of  the  Continental  schools  in  gen- 
eral !  We  dare  not  consume  too  much  of  his  time  with 
matters  that  are  not  well-known  to  his  precursors 
in  the  same  field.  The  desire  of  such  a  student  for 
discovery,  for  learning,  can  be  satisfied  in  the  acquisi- 
tion of  first  principles,  most  of  them  being  new  enough 
to  him ;  with  adroit  instruction,  he  will  assimilate  and 
reconcile  the  great  critical  treatises  of  the  ancients,  of 
Aristotle  and  Horace,  of  Plato  and  Longinus,  with  the 
modern  works  of  Sidney  and  Shelley.  Examining 
these  for  himself  and  reporting  what  he  finds,  not 
hearing  about  them  at  second  hand  in  lectures,  he  will 
make  the  principles  live  within  himself  by  supplying 
illustrations  from  his  own  reading  of  masterpieces. 
This  organization  of  his  own  knowledge  is  itself  a 
scientific  procedure.  Even  so,  it  is  well  to  whet  his 
desire  by  an  occasional  glimpse  of  the  undiscovered 
country.  Eventually  he  must  have  more.  A  qualified 
teacher  of  English  needs  the  experience,  at  some  time 
a  prolonged  one,  of  ascertaining  and  combining  facts 
that  have  not  been  interpreted,  in  an  untrodden  realm 
where  there  is  no  escape  from  first-hand  observation, 
comparison,  and  inference.  He  is  to  be  a  leader  in 
the  advancement  of  learning  throughout  the  nation; 
he  cannot  become  such  without  this  experience,  which 
is  necessary  to  the  development  of  a  directing  mind; 
if  he  is  potentially  unfit  for  a  lofty  calling,  the  sooner 
he  is  frightened  out  of  it  the  better  for  him  and  his 
country.  No  man  shall  say  that  his  soul  has  per- 
formed the  exalted  functions  of  a  humanist  until  he 


EESEAECH  IS  INDISPENSABLE  257 

has  endured  the  test  of  intellectual  independence. 
Transcendent  genius  may  include  the  quality  of  mind 
that  is  excited  by  research,  without  the  actual  experi- 
ence, though  we  do  not  know  this ;  in  Plato,  Dante,  and 
Milton,  genius  did  not  dispense  with  investigation. 
For  the  high  degree  of  talent  that  we  must  demand  of 
our  teachers  of  English  in  the  future,  participation  in 
research  is  indispensable. 

If  we  are  to  ennoble  the  doctorate  in  English,  we 
may  not  proceed  in  vacuo,  nor  yet  on  the  basis  of  sur- 
mise by  men  who  are  afraid  of  scholarship ;  we  must 
build  upon  what  has  been  accomplished  by  men  of 
long  experience  in  the  training  of  graduate  students. 
In  order  to  improve  on  the  past,  we  should  first  try  to 
equal  the  best  that  has  been  done  in  this  country,  and 
in  England,  and  on  the  Continent.  This  emulation 
involves  a  direct  scrutiny  of  certain  schools  of  the 
humanities  and  their  leaders.  If  I  may  speak  for  my- 
self (since  the  critic  gives  my  creed  his  approval),  I 
have  tried  to  formulate  my  demands  on  a  candidate 
for  the  doctoral  degree  in  English  to  some  extent  by 
abstracting  and  combining  elements  from  the  theory 
and  practice  of  Yale  University  (as  represented  by 
Professor  Albert  S.  Cook),  of  Harvard  University  (as 
represented  by  Professor  George  L.  Kittredge),  and, 
to  go  to  the  field  of  the  ancient  classics,  of  Johns  Hop- 
kins (as  represented  by  Professor  Basil  L.  Gilder- 
sleeve)  ;  for  from  these  three  centres  have  issued 
humanizing  influences  that  have  been  potent  for  good 
in  the  country  at  large;  the  teachers  who  owe  their 
training  to  the  three  scholars  mentioned  have  been 


258  THE  DOCTOEAL  DEGREE  IN  ENGLISH 

marked  by  breadth  of  perspective,  artistic  precision  of 
knowledge,  and  a  disposition  and  ability  to  vitalize 
the  forces  of  society.  But  in  considering  what  we 
should  expect  of  candidates  for  the  doctorate,  we  still 
have  something  to  learn  from  an  elder  generation  also, 
from  the  generation  of  Child  and  March  and  Shedd, 
of  Longfellow  and  Norton. 

We  have  something  more  to  learn  from  the  schol- 
ars of  Great  Britain  and  the  Continent;  which 
brings  us  to  what  is  called  'German'  scholarship. 
Every  thoughtful  observer  has  been  well  aware  of 
the  injury  to  humane  studies  in  central  Europe  and 
elsewhere  through  the  recent  commercialization  of 
applied  science.  But  the  objections  to  'German' 
scholarship  usually  proceed  from  writers  who  have 
glanced  at  the  titles  of  a  few  dissertations,  who 
know  almost  nothing  of  the  leading  Continental 
scholars  of  whatever  nation,  and  who  have  failed  to 
note  that  the  system  of  university  training  is  virtu- 
ally uniform  from  Scandinavia  to  Sicily.  The  com- 
plaint, if  made,  should  include  the  scholarship  of 
Norway,  Sweden,  Denmark,  Holland,  Flanders,  and 
Switzerland — not  to  mention  Austria  and  Russia.  I 
suppose  it  should  include  the  work  of  Menendez  y 
Pelayo  in  Spain  and  Pio  Rajna  in  Italy!  Nor  does 
the  average  German  scholarship  in  the  narrower 
sense  lie  open  to  the  strictures  commonly  passed  on 
it — of  pedantic  dullness  and  accuracy,  and  tame  sub- 
mission. When  poor,  it  may  be  charged  rather  with 
inaccuracy,  and  with  forced  hypothesis  and  frantic 


*  GERMAN'   SCHOLARSHIP  259 

generalization.  But  we  are  not  considering  the 
average — or  what  should  we  say  of  the  average  schol- 
arly output  of  the  American  professor  of  English  or 
Latin?  If  we  are  thinking  of  classical  scholarship 
in  Holland,  Germany,  and  Austria,  it  owes  its  spe- 
cial impetus  for  the  last  century  and  a  half  to  Eng- 
land and  Richard  Bentley.  Moreover,  the  German 
tendency  to  the  organization  of  studies  owes  much 
to  the  French  encyclop£edists  of  the  eighteenth  cent- 
ury. 

The  great  tradition  of  scholarship,  of  humanism, 
goes  back  to  Plato  and  Aristotle.  The  learning  they 
bequeathed  was  developed,  yet  gradually  dissevered 
from  philosophy,  in  the  Alexandrian  age,  'but  found 
a  sort  of  unity  again  in  Cicero,  and  again  in  Plu- 
tarch. It  was  kept  alive  in  Europe  in  the  earlier 
Middle  Ages  by  the  Benedictine  monks,  but  throve 
in  Arabia  and  Syria,  and  in  Ireland  and  England; 
whence  it  returned  to  the  Continent,  first  from  Eng- 
land (as  when  Alcuin  carried  the  learning  of  Bede 
and  Egbert  from  the  school  at  York  to  the  court 
school  of  Charles  the  Great,  and  to  the  school  at 
Tours),  and  then,  in  the  later  Middle  Ages,  through 
the  Saracens,  though  rills  had  all  along  trickled  in 
from  Byzantium  and  Toledo;  and,  partly  through 
influences  from  Byzantium,  Graaco-Roman  culture 
was  revived  in  Italy  in  the  Renaissance,  thence 
spreading  northward.  In  the  earlier  Renaissance, 
the  tradition  was  rather  Latin  and  Ciceronian  than 
Greek  and  Platonic.  More  recently — in  Boeckh,  for 
example — the   Greek  tradition   reached   a   point  of 


260         THE  DOCTOEAL  DEGEEE  IN  ENGLISH 

culmination.  Meanwhile  the  tradition  of  Biblical 
scholarship,  originating  in  the  Fathers,  had  never 
wholly  failed,  nor  had  the  scholarly  tradition  of  the 
Hebrew  commentators.  With  the  Reformation,  at 
least  in  England,  begins  the  history  of  a  scholarship 
devoted  to  the  modern  vernacular  literatures.  Some- 
thing like  an  organization  of  this  scholarship  ap- 
pears in  the  latter  half  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
at  least  for  English  literature;  for  Italy,  both  the 
beginnings  (in  the  critical  work  of  Dante),  and  the 
first  eiforts  at  organization,  come  earlier.  But  the 
organization  proper  of  scholarship  for  the  Germanic 
and  Eomance  languages  and  literatures  follows  the 
synthetic  work  of  Boeckh  and  his  age  for  classical 
studies.  Like  the  organization  of  classical  and 
Biblical  scholarship,  it  has  centred  in  Germany  and 
France,  yet  has  been  the  accomplishment  of  Europe 
as  a  whole,  the  North  building  upon  foundations 
laid  by  the  South. 

Since  the  English  have  shown  no  special  genius 
for  the  organization  of  studies,  we  must  chiefly  look 
to  the  Continent  for  sound  traditions  in  rebasing 
our  demands  for  the  doctorate;  reviewing  the  entire 
history  of  classical  and  Biblical  scholarship,  in  order 
to  plot  the  curve  of  development  in  English  and  sub- 
jects thereto  related.  Nor  may  the  notable  scholars 
in  modern  subjects,  such  as  Ten  Brink,  Gaston  Paris, 
and  many  others,  be  disregarded  in  our  survey. 

Of  course  the  dissertation  should  be  our  main  re- 
quirement for  the  doctorate.  Who  has  thought 
otherwise?    But  the  nature  of  the  thesis,  the  subject 


THE  KEQUISITE  DISSEETATION  261 

of  the  dissertation,  cannot  be  wholly  determined  in 
advance ;  it  will  vary,  not  only  with  several  types  of 
mind,  but  with  the  needs  and  capacities  of  the  indi- 
vidual student,  so  long  as  the  fundamental  habits  of 
thoroughness  and  accuracy  are  not  imperiled.  Fur- 
thermore, the  dissertation  should  not  be  useful  only 
to  the  man  who  writes  it,  or  only  to  him  and  his 
preceptor.  If  the  subject  is  well-chosen  and  well- 
treated,  the  monograph  will  subserve  the  vital  inter- 
ests of  at  least  a  few  persons  in  this  country,  pos- 
sibly of  more  in  Great  Britain,  and  of  yet  more  upon 
the  Continent.  The  choice  requires  knowledge  and 
imagination  in  the  teacher.  Here,  again,  the  im- 
agination has  excellent  models  in  the  best  of  the 
Yale  Studies  in  English;  of  the  Hmrva/rd  Studies  and 
Notes  in  Philology  and  Literature;  of  the  mono- 
graphs produced  by  students  of  Professor  Carleton 
Brown,  Professor  Manly,  Professor  Bright,  and 
others.  At  Columbia  University  a  great  many  excel- 
lent subjects  have  been  hit  upon.  In  England,  we 
have  the  admirable  series  inspired  by  Professor  Her- 
ford  at  Manchester,  not  to  speak  of  the  stimulating 
influence  of  Professor  Ker,  the  late  Dr.  Fumivall, 
and  many  others.  In  France,  the  doctoral  disserta- 
tion is  the  work  of  a  more  mature  student  than  in 
Germany,  appearing  ten  years  or  so  after  the  author 
has  become  established  as  a  teacher;  such  are  the 
monographs  produced  by  pupils  of  men  like  Beljame 
and  Angellier,  or  frequently  of  classical  scholars  like 
the  brothers  Croiset.  The  German  dissertation,  com- 
monly written  by  a  young  man  of  wide  reading, 
18 


262 


THE  DOCTORAL  DEGREE  IN  ENGLISH 


does  not  often  display  or  utilize  his  general  attain- 
ments. It  is  too  often  perfunctory,  too  much  sub- 
ordinated to  other  parts  of  his  training.  Yet  very 
few  are  useless,  and  some  are  of  great  value;  the 
quality  has  always  differed  in  different  universities. 
Of  late,  the  topics  suggested  by  Professor  Kaluza  at 
the  University  of  Konigsberg  will  bear  inspection. 
In  Denmark,  under  the  same  kind  of  training,  the 
monographs  written  under  the  direction  of  Profes- 
sor Jespersen  offer  hints  that  may  enter  into  our 
synthetic  conception  of  the  range  of  subjects  suit- 
able for  the  dissertation  in  English.  This  concep- 
tion must  arise  in  part  from  the  philosophy  of  schol- 
arship, and  in  part  from  experience — through 
inference  from  the  best  work  already  done  under 
the  best  teachers.  Alas,  how  few  of  us  can  know 
what  we  ought  about  the  great  scholars,  the  great 
humanists,  of  the  Italian  Renaissance,  or  of  that 
Alexandrian  learning,  so  often  decried,  which  in  the 
end  gave  rise  to  a  Virgil ! 

The  classical  Renaissance  reached  a  temporary 
culmination  about  the  year  1850.  We  are  now  in 
the  midst  of  a  renaissance  of  the  Middle  Ages,  of 
the  life  from  which  sprang  Dante  and  the  ecclesias- 
tical architecture  of  France.  Though  the  mediaeval 
elements  in  Spenser,  Shakespeare,^  and  Milton  are 

*  CJompare  Nouvelles  Frangoises  en  Prose  du  XlVe  Siecle,  ed. 
by  Moland  and  d'Hericault,  Paris,  1858,  Introduction,  p.  xlvii: 
'Nous  devions  a  Shakspeare,  qui  est  pour  nous  moins  un  poete 
anglois  que  le  representant  sublime  de  la  poesie  du  Moyen  Age, 
nous  lui  devions  ce  travail.  .  .  .  Nous  esperons  que  cette  etude 


EENAISSANOE  OF  THE  MIDDLE  AGES  263 

obvious,  the  more  definite  reintegration  began  with 
the  poets  and  scholars  in  the  latter  half  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  and  was  carried  on  by  their 
successors  in  the  nineteenth — for  example,  in  the 
Ecclesiastical  Sonnets  of  Wordsworth  and  in  Ten- 
nyson's Idylls  of  the  King.  The  brothers  Grimm, 
Montalembert,  Longfellow,  Ruskin,  illustrate  various 
aspects  of  the  same  revival,  which  has  indeed  been 
multiform.  The  great  English  historians  contem- 
porary with  Ruskin — Freeman  and  Stubbs,  for  in- 
stance— were  medievalists.  And  the  great  produc- 
tive scholars  of  the  present  day  are  medigevalists. 
The  most  eminent  American  architect  is  a  medieval- 
ist. This  vital  movement,  which  is  now  becoming 
unified,  assuredly  has  yet  some  time  to  run;  and  it 
will  sweep  on  regardless  of  falsetto  protests  from 
neo-pagans,  or  from  unoriginal  minds  that  contem- 
plate mere  eddies  on  the  surface  of  life  and  learning. 
For  Europe  and  America,  for  the  colonies  of  Eu- 
rope, the  two  fountain-heads  of  modern  culture  are 
the  ancient  Mediterranean  civilization  (of  Greece, 
Rome,  and  Palestine)  and  the  Middle  Ages.  Modern 
times,  modern  languages  and  literatures,  are  unin- 
telligible apart  from  the  ancient  and  medieval 
sources  from  which  they  sprang,  and  from  which 
they  still  proceed.  Thus  the  recent  war  can  hardly 
be  understood  by  one  who  is  ignorant  of  political 
servira  tout  a  la  fois  a  la  gloire  de  Shakspeare  et  a  la  glodre  du 
Moyen  Age,  en  montrant  d'une  part  avec  quelle  puissance  et 
quelle  sympathie  I'e  poete  adoptoit  la  poesie  du  passe,  en  indi- 
quant  d  'autre  part  eombien  etoit  deja  riche  ce  fond  que  le  Moyen 
Age  livroit  au  genie  du  dernier  et  du  plus  sublime  des  trouveres. ' 


264         THE  DOCTORAL  DEGREE  IN  ENGLISH 

theories  and  political  conditions  in  the  Middle  Ages, 
or,  say,  of  English  ideals  from  the  time  of  King  Al- 
fred. The  statement  might  be  deemed  a  truism, 
were  it  not  often  denied  by  implication ;  the  fact  has 
a  necessary  bearing  upon  the  demands  we  make  on 
our  doctors  who  are  to  propagate  the  English  tradi- 
tion. 

That  the  ideals  we  hold  dearer  than  life  were 
formed  in  the  Middle  Ages  is  the  primary  reason 
why  we  cannot  dispense  with  the  study  of  Old  Eng- 
lish. It  is  astonishing  to  find  a  man  who  affects  some 
interest  in  those  ideals  contending  that  the  serious 
student  of  them  may  forego  an  acquaintance  with 
the  language,  literature,  and  general  civilization  of 
England  before  the  time  of  Chaucer.  Not  to  men- 
tion the  poetry  of  Cynewulf,  one  of  the  six  or  seven 
foremost  English  poets,  how  are  we  to  grasp  the  full 
meaning  of  Chaucer,  or  of  Langland,  or  of  Wj'-clif, 
or  of  the  Pearl,  or  of  the  earliest  English  drama, 
without  a  previous  familiarity  with  Old  English? 
Are  we  actually  to  consign  the  age  of  Alfred,  the 
early  history  of  the  Church  in  England,  and  the  de- 
velopment of  Biblical  English,  to  the  limbo  of  obliv- 
ion? What  would  Milton  and  "Wordsworth  say  to 
this?  Or  Tennyson?  Or  Mr.  Kipling?  To  observe 
English  literature,  English  ideals,  from  the  time  of 
the  Renaissance  alone  is  to  observe  them  in  their 
period  of  diffusion.  Before  the  age  of  colonial  ex- 
pansion, the  ideals  of  English  culture  lie  all  together, 
as  it  were,  and  are  clear  and  distinct;  subsequently, 
they  are  scattered,  overlaid,  often  more  or  less  dim 


OHAUCEE  AND  OLD  ENGLISH  265 

and  tarnished.  We  test  the  genuine  English  tradi- 
tion in  a  Wordsworth,  a  Tennyson,  a  Kipling,  by 
reference  to  parallels  in  the  Middle  Ages. 

Thus  we  may  justify  a  seminary  course  in  Chaucer, 
or  at  all  events  in  some  topic  requiring  a  study  of 
the  Middle  Ages.  There  is  good  reason  for  selecting 
Chaucer  himself:  he  is  remote  enough  to  insure  the 
perspective  that  intensive  courses  in  Spenser,  or 
Shakespeare,  or  Milton,  or  a  more  recent  author  or 
period,  are  not  certain  to  develop  in  a  graduate  stu- 
dent ;  and  for  the  ends  of  investigation  the  scholarly 
apparatus  is  now  more  adequate  for  Chaucer  than 
for  any  later  poet  save  Shakespeare.  Again,  he  is 
a  meeting-point  for  Old  English  scholarship,  medi- 
aeval French  and  Italian  scholarship,  and  (through 
Boethius  and  the  like)  classical  scholarship.  Nearly 
all  our  studies  lead  to  him,  or  away  from  him  to 
modern  times.  The  uncritical  assumption  that  he 
may  be  dealt  with  in  scholarly  fashion  by  one  who 
has  neglected  Old  English  may  satisfy  the  purveyor 
of  information  in  a  finishing-school  for  young  ladies ; 
it  may  even  echo  a  lecture  by  Sir  Arthur  Quiller- 
Couch ;  it  will  hardly  do  for  a  modern  humanist  and 
a  censor  of  university  studies  in  English.  What 
Chaucerian  scholar  of  note  has  lacked  a  complete 
linguistic  training?  Tyrwhitt?  or  Child?  or  Skeat? 
or  Ten  Brink? 

We  have  heard  too  much  ill-considered  talk  about 
'mediaBvalism'  and  'Anglo-Saxon,'  and  about  the 
classics  forming  'the  great  tradition  and  inspiration 
of  English  literature,'  and  English  literature  as  be- 


266         THE  DOCTOEAL  DEGEEE  IN  ENGLISH 

ginning  with  Chaucer — ^^as  if  Christian  culture  meant 
nothing  to  our  poets,  or  as  if  there  were  no  classical 
culture  in  Bede  and  Aldhelm,  in  Alcuin  and  ^Ifric. 
Such  notions  are  tags  by  which  the  real  humanist  of 
the  present  may  detect  the  sham  or  one-sided  humanist 
who  has  lagged  behind  the  march  of  scholarship.  One 
may  venture  to  say  this  with  the  more  emphasis,  whose 
lot  it  has  been  to  do  what  he  could,  in  teaching,  in 
research,  and  in  publication,  to  promote  the  study  of 
the  ancient  classics  in  relation  to  English.  But  nearly 
all  I  should  like  to  say  concerning  false  notions  of 
mediaevalism,  and  of  literary  and  linguistic  investiga- 
tion, and  of  the  relation  of  the  Middle  Ages  to  the 
humanities,  has  been  anticipated  by  two  writers  who 
are  more  adroit  and  learned  and  humane  than  ever 
I  can  hope  to  be.  I  refer  all  who  wish  to  consider 
the  creed  of  the  humanist,  and  to  formulate  require- 
ments for  the  doctoral  degree  in  a  modern  subject,  to 
the  address  on  The  Dark  Ages  by  Professor  Grand- 
gent,  and  that  on  The  Province  of  English  Philology 
by  Professor  Cook,  in  the  Publications  of  the  Modern 
Language  Association  of  America} 

Quench  not  the  spirit;  but  prove  (investigate)  all 
things,  and  hold  fast  that  which  is  good. 

*  Charles  H.  Grandgent  in  PMLA.,  New  Series  21.  xlii-lxx 
(1913);  Albert  S.  Cook  in  PMLA.,  Old  Series  13.  185-204 
(1898). 


XIV 

TWO  VIEWS  OF  EDUCATION ' 

POETS,  according  to  Horace,  may  have  any  one  of 
three  ends  in  view :  they  may  aim  to  instruct, 
or  to  entertain,  or  at  once  to  profit  and  delight.^  What 
of  teachers? — for  they  in  a  sense  are  poets,  that  is, 
literally,  makers;  not  makers  of  verse,  to  be  sure,  or 
of  fiction  in  words,  but  makers  of  character  and  mould- 
ers of  intellect,  by  the  instrumentality  of  pleasure  and 
pain,  their  principal  tools.  If  their, means  are  pain 
and  pleasure,  censure  and  praise,  have  they  also  two 
main  purposes,  or  is  the  final  object  of  education 
always  one  and  the  same  ?  The  chief  end  of  education, 
I  take  it,  must  be  allied  to  the  chief  end  of  man ;  and 
this,  in  the  words  of  the  Catechism,  is  *to  glorify  God, 
and  to  enjoy  Him  for  ever.'  There  we  have,  as  it 
seems,  a  diouble  aim — not  quite  that  of  Horace,  but  re- 
minding us  of  his  distinction,  A  good  education  may 
therefore  be  defined  as  one  which  leads  uS'  to  glorify  the 
right  things,  and  to  enjoy  the  right  things,  in  the  right 
measure;  for  in  truth  when  we  discover  what  a  man 
really  enjoys,  and  what  he  deems  profitable  and  praise- 
worthy, we  know  his  inmost  nature,  and  the  essential 
effect  of  all  his  training. 

*  Reprinted  from  The  Sewanee  Beview   26.   333-350    (July, 
1918),  with  the  kind  permission  of  the  editor. 

2  Ars  Poeftica  333-4. 

267 


268  TWO  VIEWS  OF  EDUCATION 

I  have  dwelt,  not  by  accident  but  intentionally,  upon 
these  several  pairs  of  terms — instruction  and  enter- 
tainment, profit  and  delight,  pain  and  pleasure,  cen- 
sure and  praise,  glorification  and  enjojrment ;  I  would 
gladly  add  other  examples — ^the  old  and  the  new,  tradi- 
tion and  the  present,  a  fixed  curriculum  and  free 
choice,  discipline  and  content — ^upon  which  the  follow- 
ing discussion  may  directly  or  indirectly  bear ;  for  my 
subject  is  'Two  Views  of  Education,'  and  I  would  fain 
believe  that  these  two  views  are  fairly  comprehensive, 
that  they  include  the  opposite  opinions,  however  dis- 
guised or  transmuted,  underlying  the  most  varied  dis- 
cussions of  pedagogical  theory  and  practice.  Mean- 
while we  shall  do  well  to  remember  that  for  every  pair 
of  opposites  there  is  commonly  a  third  or  interme- 
diate term  to  be  found,  as  the  dictum  of  Horace  on 
poets  might  easily  suggest.  In  fact,  our  topic  is  not 
adequately  described  until  we  call  it  'Two  Views  of 
Education,  and  a  Tertium  Quid';  for  neither  view 
completely  reckons  with  the  contradictions  in  human 
nature — 'at  once  the  best  thing  and  the  worst  with 
which  we  are  immediately  acquainted. 

The  two  views  in  question  are  as  old  as  humanity, 
and  as  young ;  as  ancient  as  the  Greeks,  and  as  modern ; 
as  remote  as  the  Old  Testament,  and  as  near  as  the 
New;  they  belong  quite  as  much  to  America  as  to 
Europe.  Both  are  traditional,  and  like  tradition  itself 
they  are,  properly  speaking,  neither  old  nor  new,  but 
eternal.  We  might  therefore  illustrate  them  in  many 
ways  and  from  many  sources;  but  I  shall  select  as 
representative  of  these  opposite  views  two  men  who 


CALVIN  AND  EOUSSEATJ  269 

belong  to  the  modem  Protestant  tradition,  rather  than 
the  ancient  classical,  or  the  mediaeval  Catholic.  Both 
men  are  associated  with  democratic  rather  than  mon- 
archical institutions ;  both  are  connected  in  our  minds 
with  republican  Switzerland  and  the  Protestant  city 
of  Geneva.  For  good  or  ill,  the  influence  of  each  has 
been  powerful,  as  it  has  been  obvious,  upon  the  edu- 
cation of  Protestant  America.  The  two  main  educa- 
tional tendencies  in  our  country,  I  submit,  may  be 
fitly  designated  if  we  link  one  with  the  name  of  John 
Calvin  and  the  doctrine  of  human  depravity,  and  the 
other  with  that  of  Jean  Jacques  Rousseau  and  the 
belief,  as  he  expressed  it,  in  the  original  goodness  of 
man.  I  invite  the  reader's  attention  first  to  the  Cal- 
vinistic  doctrine  of  original  sin. 

In  Europe,  and  hence  in  America,  the  influence  of 
Calvin  is  prior,  and  now  might  almost  seem  to  have 
run  its  course.  He  was  born  in  the  year  1509,  two  cen- 
turies before  Rousseau — not,  like  Rousseau,  at  Geneva. 
However,  during  his  relatively  brief  career  (for  he 
died  at  the  age  of  fifty-five)  he  was  mainly  active 
there;  and  from  Geneva  the  effect  of  his  life  and 
learning  spread  through  the  countries  of  the  Reform- 
ation, for  example  to  Scotland,  and  thence  to  the 
American  colonies.  Thus  the  rigorous  classical  tradi- 
tion of  Princeton  may  easily  be  traced  to  him.  But 
in  general,  of  course,  we  are  right  in  connecting  the 
type  of  learning,  and  the  view  of  life,  which  once  pre- 
vailed throughout  our  Eastern  colleges  with  the  ideals 
of  Calvin,  even  though  these  ideals  were  shared  by 
other  leaders  of  the  Reformation. 


270  TWO  VIEWS  OF  EDUCATION 

For  him  and  his  followers,  the  taint  of  sin  is  in 
every  man  and  woman : 

In  Adam's  fall  we  sinned  all, 

as  the  New  England  Primer  has  it.  The  whole  man 
is  infected.  The  natural  process  of  generation  is  evil ; 
the  babe  in  the  womb  is  guilty ;  each  and  every  infant 
born  into  the  world  is  a  sinner,^  subject  to  the  power 
of  the  devil,  and  under  condemnation  of  the  law  of 
God  unless  the  badness  ingrained  is  driven  out  with 
a  scourge.  Education,  therefore,  cannot  be  purely 
delightful.  To  teach  is  not  to  please,  and  to  profit  is 
not  to  entertain.  The  native  motions  of  the  individual 
soul  toward  glory  and  delight  lead  straight  to  self- 
assertion  and  self-enjoyment.  They  must  be  killed; 
for  learning  means  self-mortification  in  order  that  we 
may  glorify  and  enjoy  in  the  right  fashion. 

The  doctrine  of  original  sin  finds  no  great  favor  in 
America  at  the  present  time  among  so-called  persons 
of  cultivation.  For  that  matter,  sin  itself  is  not  a 
word  to  argue  with,  as  are  heredity,  environment,  and 
so  on.  The  belief  in  the  doctrine  is  supposed  to  rest 
upon  a  way  of  interpreting  the  story  of  the  fall,  in 
Genesis,  which  is  no  longer  countenanced.  That  story, 
we  are  told,  represents,  not  literal,  but  poetical  truth ; 
the  Church  Fathers  themselves  for  the  most  part 
treated  it  as  allegory.  But  after  all,  interpret  the 
story  as  we  may,  it  corresponds  to  something  in  human 
nature;  the  notion  that  we  come  into  the  world  with 

*  Calvin,  Institutes  of  the  Christian  Religion,  Book  2,  chap.  1 
(trans,  by  Beveridge,  1845,  1.  286-294). 


ORIGINAL  SIN  271 

evil  tendencies  is  borne  out  by  the  inner  experience  of 
every  one  of  us.  Call  the  thing  by  whatever  name  we 
like,  what  Calvin  termed  original  sin  represents  an 
ultimate  element  in  human  life.  It  is,  accordingly, 
something  to  which  the  honest  educator  dare  not  shut 
his  eyes.  Let  him  strive  to  render  his  teaching  as  posi- 
tive and  constructive  as  may  be,  he  must  yet  be  pre- 
pared to  be  negative,  and  to  act  in  a  destructive  man- 
ner, when  the  occasion  shows  the  need.  He  must  make 
the  pupil  learn  how  to  deny  himself,  and  we  have  never 
seen  this  accomplished  in  a  living  human  being  with- 
out the  infliction  of  pain,  whether  mental  or  physical, 
or  both.  There  is,  then,  something  to  be  said  for  the 
Calvinistic  mode  of  education.  For  one  thing,  begin- 
ning with  Calvin  himself  it  produced  many  scholars  of 
wide  and  deep  learning. 

Not  least  among  these  was  Milton.  The  great  poet 
of  the  Reformation  well  exemplifies  what  may  be 
expected  of  the  traditional  rigor  in  teaching  and 
studying  the  classics  under  the  best  of  circumstances. 
It  is  true,  in  his  tractate  Of  Education  he  clearly 
recognizes  the  desirability  of  introducing  an  element 
of  pleasure  in  education,  and  the  need,  not  of  forced, 
but  of  'willing'  obedience  on  the  side  of  the  student. 
But  in  his  own  exceedingly  effective  practice  as 
schoolmaster  he  did  not  follow  the  principle  of  'read- 
ing without  tears.'  Aubrey  says  of  him  that  he 
'took  into  his  tuition  his  sister's  two  sons,  Edward 
and  John  Philips,  the  first  ten,  the  other  nine,  years 
of  age,  and  in  a  year's  time  made  them  capable  of 
interpreting  a  Latin  author  at  sight,  .  .  .  and  within 


272  TWO  VIEWS  OF  EDUCATION 

three  years  they  went  through  the  best  of  Latin  and 
Greek  poets.'  The  biographer  adds:  *As  he  was 
severe  on  one  hand,  so  he  was  most  familiar  and 
free  in  his  conversation  to  those  to  whom  most  sour 
in  his  way  of  education. '  ^  Indeed,  it  is  said  that 
his  first  wife  left  his  house  in  part  because  she  could 
not  endure  the  cries  of  distress  from  the  pupils.^ 
To  adapt  his  own  words,  what  with  mild  and  effec- 
tual persuasions,  and  what  with  the  intimation  of 
some  fear,  but  chiefly  by  his  own  example,  he  kept 
them  plying  hard  and  daily  until  they  knew  the  chief 
and  necessary  rules  of  a  good  Latin  Grammar;  and 
shortly  had  them  reading  the  authors  of  works  on 
agriculture,  Cato,  Varro,  and  Columella — 'for  the 
matter  is  most  easy,  and  if  the  language  be  difficult, 
so  much  the  better,  it  is  not  a  difficulty  above  their 
years. '  ^  Doubtless  he  would  have  failed  in  giving 
boys  the  ability  to  read  (not  to  puzzle  out)  Latin  in 
a  year,  or  to  do  as  well  with  Greek  in  another,  had 
there  been  no  sourness  in  his  procedure. 

I  might  go  on  to  show  how  the  tradition  thus  en- 
nobled in  the  hands  of  Milton  held  sway,  in  teaching 
that  was  not  always  equally  successful,  throughout 
Protestant  Europe  and  America  well  into  the  nine- 
teenth century.  Under  less  competent  teachers,  of 
course,  the  pupils  did  not  learn  to  interpret  Greek 
and  Latin  with  ease ;  and  the  plan  of  driving  out  the 

*  Of  Education,   Areopagitica,    The   Commonwealth,   ed.    by 
Lockwood,  1911,  p.  xli. 
'Ibid.,  p.  xlii. 
8  Ibid.,  pp.  13-14. 


EOUSSEAU  AND  ORIGINAL  GOODNESS         273 

old  Adam  by  forcing  him  to  grind  gerunds  no  doubt 
led  to  many  an  abuse.  Nor  can  we  defend  a  study  of 
language  that  does  not  quickly  lead  to  the  free  com- 
munication of  ideas  from  the  author  to  the  reader. 
At  the  same  time  we  must  not  forget  that  virtually 
all  the  culture  we  had  in  America  during  the  forma- 
tive years  of  the  Republic  was  essentially  classical, 
essentially  Calvinistic,  and  in  the  last  analysis  cen- 
tred in  the  doctrine  of  original  sin.  Even  to-day, 
the  stronghold  of  the  old  classical  type  of  education 
is  the  South,  in  the  sections  where  the  stricter  forms 
of  Protestantism  still  maintain  their  integrity,  and 
where  parental  authority  has  not  relaxed. 

Somewhat  less  than  a  century  and  a  haJf  after 
the  death  of  Calvin,  there  was  born  at  Geneva,  in 
the  year  1712,  a  child  whose  mother  died  in  giving 
him  birth,  and  whose  irresponsible  father  allowed 
him  to  grow  up  without  a  semblance  of  discipline. 
This  boy  soon  found  himself  in  conflict  with  the  tra- 
ditions of  his  native  city;  his  entire  life  might  be 
described  as  a  long  rebellion  against  society  as  he 
found  it,  and  against  the  education  by  which  society 
is  formed.  Himself  undisciplined  and  self-educated 
(which  means  to  some  extent  badly  educated),  in 
time  he  became  known  as  a  writer  on  the  practice  of 
education.  Whether  we  give  the  credit  to  Rousseau 
himself  for  the  ideas  which  have  circulated  as  his, 
and  which  his  native  eloquence  rendered  intelligible 
to  the  masses,  or  whether  he  gave  utterance  to  beliefs 
which  were  common  property  in  his  age,  is  imma- 
terial.    "We  are  amply  justified  in  associating  with 


274  TWO  VIEWS  OF  EDUCATION 

his  name  a  conception  of  human  nature,  diametri- 
cally opposed  to  that  maintained  by  Calvin,  which 
we  may  term  the  doctrine  of  original  goodness.  With 
it  goes  a  corresponding  theory  of  education. 

Coming  from  the  hand  of  the  Author  of  all  things, 
contends  Rousseau,  the  child,  like  every  other  part 
of  creation,  is  good;  whereas  in  the  hands  of  man 
everything  degenerates.  The  depravity  we  observe 
in  those  about  us  is  not  inborn;  it  arises  from  the 
first  contact  of  the  individual,  a  vicious  contact,  with 
his  kind.  From  this  first  depravity  all  others  come 
in  succession ;  the  entire  moral  order  is  changed,  and 
natural  feeling  is  extinguished  in  all  hearts.  Do 
you  wish,  then,  that  the  child  shall  preserve  his 
original  form?  Help  him  to  preserve  it  from  the 
moment  he  enters  the  world.  As  soon  as  he  is  bom 
take  possession  of  him,  and  do  not  let  him  go  until 
he  is  a  man.  The  Author  of  nature  has  given  chil- 
dren an  active  principle,  but  in  a  state  of  nature  He 
leaves  them  with  little  power  to  indulge  it  to  their 
own  injury.  But  no  sooner  do  those  about  the  child 
permit  him  to  regard  them  as  the  instruments  of  his 
will,  whom  he  can  set  in  motion,  than  he  uses  them 
in  following  his  own  inclination.  In  this  way 
he  becomes  disagreeable,  tyrannical,  imperious,  per- 
verse, unruly;  a  development,  not  arising  from  a 
natural  spirit  of  domination,  but  creating  such  a 
spirit.  The  child,  then,  in  the  main,  must  be  treated 
in  such  fashion  that  he  seems  to  be  left  to  himself. 
Our  pedantic  mania  for  instructing  constantly  leads 
us  to  teach  children  what  they  can  learn  far  better 


INCONSISTENCY  OF  EOUSSEAU  275 

for  themselves,  and  to  lose  sight  of  what  we  alone 
can  teach  them.  "What,  then,  must  be  thought  of  that 
barbarous  education  which  sacrifices  the  present  to 
an  uncertain  future,  loads  the  child  with  every  de- 
scription of  fetters,  and  begins,  by  making  him 
wretched,  to  prepare  for  him  some  far-away  indefi- 
nite happiness  he  may  never  enjoy  ?  ^ 

It  is  no  concern  of  ours  to  explain  away  the  incon- 
sistencies in  these  sentiments  from  Rousseau's  Emile. 
We  need  not  ask  why,  if  the  natural  inclination  is 
always  good  in  all  men  to  begin  with,  the  inevitable 
result  should  be  that  in  the  hands  of  man  all  things, 
including  his  own  children,  degenerate.  Nor  are  we 
bound  to  reflect  how  it  comes  about  that  Rousseau, 
whose  general  tendency  was  inimical  to  Christian- 
ity, and  whose  life  was  far  from  a  model  for  the 
Christian,  should  nevertheless  on  occasion  draw  close 
to  the  utterances  of  Christ  respecting  children  and 
the  necessity  of  our  becoming  like  them.  We  are 
simply  dealing  with  the  ideas  of  Rousseau  as  he 
published  them,  and  as  a  subsequent  generation  of 
educational  theorists  received  them.  The  child,  in 
his  view,  is  a  child  of  God,  and  is  therefore  good.  If 
we  free  his  inborn  tendency  from  hindrances,  nature 
will  do  the  rest.  The  teacher  is  simply  the  power 
that  affords  nature  a  chance  of  which  nature  will 

*  The  paragraph  is  made  up  of  sentences  adapted  from  the 
earlier  parts  of  Emile,  sometimes  in  language  close  to  the  origi- 
nal, and  sometimes  word  for  word.  See  Emile,  Books  1  and  2 
(CEuvres  completes  de  J.  J.  Eousseau,  Paris,  1852,  2.  399,  406, 
408;  423,  428,  429). 


276  '^^^  VIEWS  OF  EDUCATION 

gladly  avail  itself.  In  general,  under  the  scheme  of 
Rousseau,  the  child  is  to  escape  censure ;  he  is  not  to 
do  anything  because  it  is  traditional ;  he  is  to  live  in 
the  present,  not  forced  to  perform  actions  with  a 
view  to  his  subsequent  welfare;  his  studies  are  not 
fixed,  he  is  free  to  choose  what  he  will  learn;  he 
knows  nothing  of  discipline.  In  this  arrangement, 
obviously,  to  teach  is  to  please,  and  to  profit  is  to 
furnish  entertainment.  The  chief  end  of  man  is 
present  glory  and  enjoyment.  If  the  child  reads  at 
all,  let  him  read  without  tears.  But  so  far  as  I 
know,  it  is  not  recorded  that  Rousseau  ever  actually 
taught  a  living  individual  to  accomplish  anything, 
much  less  to  read  Latin  or  Greek  in  either  one  year 
or  more;  and,  if  pushed  to  extremes,  we  should  have 
to  admit  that  on  the  whole  he  was  not  well  educated 
enough  to  be  both  happy  and  useful,  always  promot- 
ing and  relishing  the  highest  and  best  things  in  life. 
To  employ  the  words  of  Milton,  on  *a  complete  and 
generous  education,'  Rousseau  was  never  fitted  'to 
perform  justly,  skilfully,  and  magnanimously  all 
the  offices,  both  private  and  public,  of  peace  and 
war. '  ^  Yet  it  would  be  idle  to  maintain  that  his  re- 
flections are  without  value.  On  the  contrary,  if  I 
am  not  mistaken,  many  of  us  would  find  it  difficult 
not  to  assent  in  some  measure  to  the  truth  of  most 
of  his  contentions. 

At  all  events,  America  at  large  has  found  it  impos- 
sible not  to  assent  to  them.  And  the  history  of  Amer- 
ican education,  as  we  can  see  by  a  glance  at  the  change 

*  Of  Education  [et«.],  ed.  by  Lockwood,  p.  9. 


'DISCIPLINE'  AND  'CONTENT'  277 

which  occurred  in  the  last  fifty  years  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  has  meant  a  gradual  movement  away  from 
the  ideals  of  Calvin  and  the  Protestant  Reformation 
toward  those  of  Rousseau  and  the  French  Revolution. 
We  have  come  to  aim  less  at  ultimate  improvement, 
and  more  at  immediate  satisfaction.    Not  discipline, 
but  content,  is  the  watchword.    "We  are  not  to  trouble 
ourselves  and  our  students  with  what  is  old,  difficult, 
unnatural,  and  far-away,  when  we  and  they  crave  what 
is  new,  easy,  natural,  and  close  at  hand.     The  chief 
end  of  man  is  to  make  a  living  and  to  adapt  himself 
comfortably  to  his  environment.     Let  him  know  the 
objects  that  lie  about  him — and  this  means,  we  may 
say,  not  the  books  of  permanent  value  (though  libraries 
existing  at  this  very  moment  are  full  of  them,  so  that 
they  are  always  a  part  of  our  environment),  but  the 
geology  of  his  native  region,  and  the  latest  number 
of  the  Outlook  or  the  Review  of  Reviews.    Strangely 
enough,  no  one  objects  to  the  study  of  geological 
strata,  near  in  point  of  space,  but  in  point  of  time 
many  thousand  years  more  remote  than  the  Greeks 
and  Romans;  but  indeed  our  theorists  on  education 
tell  us  to  occupy  ourselves  with  our  neighbor  and  with 
proximate  interests  before  they  give  us  any  answer  to 
the  question,   'Who  is  my   neighbor?' — though   the 
answer,  las  in  the  parable,  is  generally  not  the  one 
that  first  occurs  to  the  casual  observer.    The  Republic 
of  Plato  and  the  Ethics  of  Aristotle  have,  after  all, 
been   neighbors  to  more  well-educated  minds  than 
ever  the  Outlook  or  the  Review  of  Reviews  will  be. 
Furthermore,  remembering  that  Plutarch  formed  an 
19 


278  TWO  VIEWS  OF  EDUCATION 

inspiring  item  in  the  surroundings  of  the  young  Rous- 
seau, one  is  tempted  to  recall  that  Emile  was  to  be 
reared,  not  in  a  chance,  but  in  a  carefully  selected 
environment ;  the  principle  might  involve  the  removal 
of  any  given  book  or  pamphlet  from  his  clutch,  and 
the  substitution  of  'The  Lives  of  the  noble  Grecians 
mid  Romans,  compared  together  by  that  grave  learned 
Philosopher  and  Historiographer'  of  Chseronea.  In 
the  type  of  pedagogy  inspired  by  Rousseau,  the  acci- 
dental circumstances  and  the  natural  leaning  one 
betrays  at  the  outset  count  as  the  determining  factors 
in  one's  instruction.  And  so  in  our  time  we  study 
English,  French,  and  German,  and,  newest  of  all, 
Spanish,  since  the  peoples  seem  to  be  our  neighbors ; 
and  we  do  this  to  the  disadvantage  of  Greek  and 
Latin,  good  Samaritans  able  and  willing  to  care  for 
the  boy  who  is  wounded  in  the  head  by  ignorance.  So 
also  we  have  the  elective  system  in  place  of  a  fixed 
curriculum,  with  lectures  to  listen  to  instead  of  reci- 
tations to  make,  so  that  our  students  know  more  about 
taking  pleasures  than  about  taking  pains;  and  we 
educate  them  for  the  first  ten  years  of  life  after  they 
leave  school,  rather  than  (to  quote  Rousseau  again) 
'for  some  far-away  indefinite  happiness  they  may 
never  enjoy.'  We  will  educate  our  boy  for  the  chief 
end.  of  man  if  you  do  not  put  the  end  too  far  ahead. 
But  why  not  go  at  least  as  far  as  the  pagan  Plato,  and 
train  our  youth  with  a  view  tO'  their  activities  at  the 
age  of  fifty  ? 

It  seems  reasonable  to  believe,  however,  that  the 
pendulum  has  again  begun  to  swing  the  other  way. 


A  WELCOME   TO  DISCIPLINE  279 

An  excess  of  rigor  and  inelasticity  in  education  is 
likely  to  be  followed  by  a  period  of  greater  freedom ; 
and  again,  when  liberty  of  choice  runs  into  wild 
license,  the  natural  good  sense  of  mankind  will  reas- 
sert the  principles  of  moderation  and  restraint.  If 
the  cause  of  discipline  and  the  classics  suffered  more 
and  more  in  the  latter  half  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
it  would  appear  that  a  reaction  has  already  set  in  dur- 
ing the  first  half  of  the  twentieth.  For  unlimited 
choice  in  studies  we  have  a  well-marked  tendency 
to  substitute  groups  of  studies,  and  fixed  conditions 
within  the  group.  And  though  theorists  declaim 
against  the  recognition  of  formal  discipline  in  the 
schools,  here  and  there  the  nation  shows  signs  of  wel- 
come to  a  universal  military  service  as  a  means  of 
inculcating  punctuality,  obedience,  and  the  love  of 
order,  in  a  lax  and  careless  generation.  The  complaint 
of  business  men  that  the  college  graduate  has  done 
what  he  likes  so  long  that  he  has  no  power  to  do  what 
he  ought  has  brought  the  faculties,  trustees,  and  even 
the  alumni  of  universities  to  consider  ways  and  means 
of  improving  scholarship.  At  least  one  of  our  col- 
leges, Amherst,  has  definitely  announced  its  intention 
of  returning  to  ancient  ways,  in  the  direction  of  rigor 
and  of  Greek  and  Latin — a  motion,  let  us  say,  toward 
the  glory  of  Grod  and  perpetual  felicity.  We  might 
go  on  to  note  other  signs  of  a  better  time  to  come ; 
for  instance,  the  resentment  aroused  in  the  public 
schools  by  the  interference  of  a  heavily-endowed  pri- 
vate board  in  favor  of  a  shallow  kind  of  education  in 
which  the  country  had  begun  to  lose  faith;  or  the 


280  TWO  VIEWS  OF  EDUCATION 

recoil  against  a  type  of  belief,  or  unbelief,  'the  re- 
ligion of  the  future,'  so-called,^  which  has,  like  the 
free  elective  system,  already  had  its  little  day  and 
been  found  wanting.     If  the  reaction  against  these 
things  is  already  in  motion  as  an  undercurrent,  call- 
ing attention  to  them  will  serve  to  hasten  its  progress. 
But  it  would  never  do  to  imply  that  the  belief  in 
the  natural  goodness  of  man  is  wholly  misplaced,  or 
that  the  notion  of  universal  human  depravity  is  the 
sole,  and  an  adequate,  basis  for  the  practice  of  teach- 
ing.   What  we  need  to  insist  on  is  the  happy  medium. 
In  educating  man  we  have  to  deal  with  him  as  he 
is,  neither  an  angel  nor  yet  a  demon.     Those  who 
have  to  do  with  children  know  that  there  is  a  con- 
flict from  the  outset  in  the  human  heart.    The  child, 
and  mankind,  are,  we  know  not  how,  at  once  origi- 
nally good  and  originally  sinf  ul.^    The  process  of  edu- 
cating man  does  mean  eliminating  the  original  sin  and 
setting  free  the  original  goodness  that  constitute  his 
heritage.     It  makes  no  difference  at  what  stage  we 
meet  him,  so  long  as  he  is  not  fully  educated ;  in  the 
long  run  the  first  time  we  come  in  contact  with  the 
individual,  whether  immediately  after  birth,  or  before 
or  after  adolescence,  or  whenever  it  may  be,  we  have 
to  reckon  with  a  contradiction  in  his  very  nature. 
Nevertheless  this  nature  is  not  dual,  but  one.     Life 
itself  is  full  of  contradictions,  irreconcilable  in  the 
abstract,  which  are  somehow  unified  and  even  har- 
monized in  practice.    Now  the  reconciliation  is  effected 

1  See  above,  p.  163,  and  footnote. 

^  See  the  myth  of  the  soul  in  the  Phcedribs  of  Plato. 


THE  EEGULATION  OF  IMPULSE  281 

by  an  art  which  is  an  imitation  and  fulfilment  of  life, 
and  which  is  likewise  contradictory  in  itself ;  for  the 
artist — the  poet,  or  painter,  or  musician — is  a  con- 
scious and  self-restraining  workman,  knowing  what 
he  does,  and  directing  his  own  action,  even  while  he 
gives  way  to  the  creative  impulse;  so  that  in  some 
inexplicable  manner  he  is  both  conscious  and  uncon- 
scious at  one  and  the  same  time.  In  fact,  successful 
art,  like  successful  life,  is  the  systematic  regulation 
of  irregular  impulse  for  the  attainment  of  a  predeter- 
mined end. 

In  the  art  of  education,  then,  we  have  what  looks 
like  a  double  task,  and  yet  is  a  single  one.  It  is  our 
function  as  teachers  in  some  way  to  say  with  Calvin 
that  crude  impulse  is  bad,  and  with  Rousseau  that 
crude  impulse  is  good.  We  must  know  how  to  kill 
it,  and,  even  in  the  act  of  doing  so,  to  make  it  live 
again.  The  teacher  must  be  a  kind  of  fate  to  his  pupil, 
and  at  the  same  time  must  bestow  upon  him  the  su- 
preme good  gift  of  free  will.  Pain,  the  thwarting 
and  crossing  of  inclination,  discipline,  unintelligible 
hardship,  cannot  be  omitted  even  from  the  earliest 
stages  of  a  preparation  for  life,  for  in  life  every  indi- 
vidual is  certain  to  meet  each  and  all  of  them;  nor 
can  their  opposites  be  omitted.  The  original  sin  of 
the  individual  must  be  scourged  and  purged  away; 
his  original  goodness  must  be  cherished  and  encour- 
aged. "We  have  to  recognize  and  harmonize  the  con- 
tradictory views  of  a  Rousseau  and  a  Calvin  both. 

There  is.  as  it  were,  a  third  view,  comprehending 
and  reconciling  the  other  two,  and  free  from  the  ex- 


282  TWO  VIEWS  OF  EDUCATION 

cess  or  defect  of  either.  This  we  may  find,  as  Aris- 
totle found  each  several  virtue,  in  the  mean  between 
two  extremes.  Thus  courage  was  for  him  an  inter- 
mediate state  between  cowardice  and  rashness,  being 
neither  of  these,  and  yet  in  a  sense  partaking  of  the 
nature  of  both,  since  the  brave  man  is  both  cautious 
and  bold;  and  so  on  throughout  the  list  of  human 
virtues  as  he  knew  them.  Similarly  in  teaching  we 
must  strive  to  reach  the  golden  mean.  We  cannot 
do  away  with  the  notion  of  discipline;  we  cannot  ig- 
nore an  ultimate  something  in  human  nature  which 
defies  the  lure  of  gentle  persuasion  and  the  promise 
of  enjoyment — a  something  for  which  no  better  name 
can  be  found  than  'original  sin,'  a  something  very 
close  to  the  real  nature  of  the  individual.  Call  it 
how  you  will,  it  is  there,  and  the  teacher  must  deal 
successfully  with  it  or  fail  in  his  effort  to  benefit 
the  pupil.  Nor,  on  the  other  hand,  can  we  neglect 
the  assistance  of  the  native  impulses  of  the  human 
heart.  Between  constant  rigor  and  constant  yield- 
ing in  the  treatment  of  inclination  lies  the  virtue  of 
the  teacher. 

But  we  observe  that  the  Aristotelian  mean  never 
lies  precisely  midway  between  the  two  extremes.  It 
is  always  nearer  to  one  of  them  than  to  the  other — 
as  courage  has  a  greater  resemblance  to  rashness 
than  to  cowardice.  In  practice,  accordingly,  we 
must  drag  ourselves  away  from  the  extreme  to  which 
we  naturally  tend,  and  struggle  toward  its  opposite. 
The  rash  man  is  exceptional ;  most  of  us  are  by  na- 
ture  cowardly,   and   must   attain   to   a  measure   of 


A  TIME  FOE  ALL  THINGS  283 

courage  by  aiming  at  boldness.  Are  we,  then,  in  the 
matter  of  education  to  aim  at  severity  or  at  soft- 
ness? Must  we  seek  to  provide  discipline,  or  to 
arouse  interest  in  content  f  Are  we  to  direct  our  ef- 
forts toward  the  eradication  of  original  sin,  other- 
wise letting  nature  have  her  way,  or  toward  the 
positive  inculcation  of  excellence,  keeping  the  pupil 
active  in  useful  and  noble  pursuits,  and  allowing 
the  evil  in  his  nature  to  die  for  want  of  exercise  ? 

Perhaps  the  answers  would  vary  in  different  periods 
of  history,  for  different  periods  in  the  life  of  the 
pupil,  with  different  pupils,  and  with  different 
teachers. 

No  doubt  the  excessive  drudgery  of  much  of  the 
older  classical  training  was  not  sufficiently  tempered 
by  a  desire  to  enlist  a  willing  obedience  in  the  pupil 
through  legitimate  appeals  to  his  curiosity  and  emo- 
tions. If  so,  the  time-honored  formal  drill,  blind  to 
the  surpassing  interest  and  beauty  in  the  tale  of 
Ulysses,  brought  its  own  penalty;  just  as  a  perni- 
cious abuse  in  the  subsequent  elective  system  in  stud- 
ies bids  fair  to  bring  down  destruction  upon  its 
own  head.  A  given  period  in  education  must  be 
studied  as  a  whole;  its  guardians  may  be  called  on 
to  interfere  with  its  drift  toward  a  vicious  extreme. 
Again,  in  the  life  of  the  pupil  there  is  a  time  for 
the  infliction  of  less  pain,  and  a  time  for  the  inflic- 
tion of  more.  Yet  tender  plants  are  not  the  worse 
for  a  little  pruning.  With  allowance  for  the  occa- 
sional exceptionally  delicate  flower,  the  judicious 
teacher  will  not  permit  young  America,  even  in  the 


284  TWO  VIEWS  OF  EDUCATION 

kindergarten,  to  fancy  itself  in  a  world  devoid  of 
shock.  The  most  successful  teacher  of  infants  I 
happen  to  know  about  was  Susanna  Wesley,  the 
mother  of  nineteen  children,  two  of  whom,  John  and 
Charles,  became  eminent,  and  afford  an  easy  com- 
parison with  Rousseau  or  his  Emile.  In  later  years 
(July  24,  1732)  she  wrote  to  her  son  John  as  follows : 

*Deae  Son:  According  to  your  desire,  I  have 
collected  the  principal  rules  I  observed  in  educating 
my  family.  .  .  . 

'The  children  were  always  put  into  a  regular 
method  of  living,  in  such  things  as  they  were  ca- 
pable of,  from  their  birth.  .  .  .  When  turned  a  year 
old  (and  some  before),  they  were  taught  to  fear  the 
rod,  and  to  cry  softly,  by  which  means  they  escaped 
abundance  of  correction  they  might  otherwise  have 
had;  and  that  most  odious  noise  of  the  crying  of 
children  was  rarely  heard  in  the  house,  but  the 
family  usually  lived  in  as  much  quietness  as  if  there 
had  not  been  a  child  among  them. 

*As  soon  as  they  were  grown  pretty  strong,  they 
were  confined  to  three  meals  a  day.  At  dinner  their 
little  table  and  chairs  were  set  by  ours,  where  they 
could  be  overlooked;  and  they  were  suffered  to  eat 
and  drink  (small  beer)  as  much  as  they  would,  but 
not  to  call  for  anything.  If  they  wanted  aught, 
they  used  to  whisper  to  the  maid  which  attended 
them,  who  came  and  spake  to  me;  and  as  soon  as 
they  could  handle  a  knife  and  fork,  they  were  set 
to  our  table.  They  were  never  suffered  to  choose 
their  meat,  but  always  made  to  eat  such  things  as 
were  provided  for  the  family.  .  .  .  Nor  were  they 
suffered  to  go  into  the  kitchen  to  ask  anything  of 
the  servants  when  they  were  at  meat ;  if  it  was  known 
they  did,  they  were  certainly  beat,  and  the  servants 


THE  WESLEYS  UNDER  DISCIPLINE  285 

severely  reprimanded.  At  six,  as  soon  as  family 
prayers  were  over,  they  had  their  supper;  at  seven, 
the  maid  washed  them,  and,  beginning  at  the  young- 
est, she  undressed  and  got  them  all  to  bed  by  eight ; 
at  which  time  she  left  them  in  their  several  rooms 
awake,  for  there  was  no  such  thing  allowed  of  in 
our  house  as  sitting  by  a  child  till  it  fell  asleep.  .  .  . 
'In  order  to  form  the  minds  of  children,  the  first 
thing  to  be  done  is  to  conquer  their  will  and  bring 
them  to  an  obedient  temper.  To  inform  the  under- 
standing is  a  work  of  time,  and  must  with  children 
proceed  by  slow  degrees  as  they  are  able  to  bear  it ; 
but  the  subjecting  the  will  is  a  thing  which  must  be 
done  at  once,  and  the  sooner  the  better;  for  by 
neglecting  timely  correction,  they  will  contract  a 
stubbornness  and  obstinacy  which  is  hardly  ever 
after  conquered,  and  never  without  using  such 
severity  as  would  be  as  painful  to  me  as  to  the  child. 
In  the  esteem  of  the  world  they  pass  for  kind  and 
indulgent,  whom  I  call  cruel,  parents,  who  permit 
their  children  to  get  habits  which  they  know  must 
be  afterwards  broken.  Nay,  some  are  so  stupidly 
fond  as  in  sport  to  teach  their  children  to  do  things 
which  in  a  while  after  they  have  severely  beaten 
them  for  doing.  Whenever  a  child  is  corrected,  it 
must  be  conquered ;  and  this  will  be  no  hard  matter 
to  do,  if  it  be  not  grown  headstrong  by  too  much 
indulgence.  And  when  the  will  of  a  child  is  totally 
subdued,  and  it  is  brought  to  revere  and  stand  in 
awe  of  the  parents,  then  a  great  many  childish  fol- 
lies and  inadvertences  may  be  passed  by.  Some 
should  be  overlooked  and  taken  no  notice  of,  and 
others  mildly  reproved;  but  no  wilful  transgression 
ought  ever  to  be  forgiven  children  without  chastise- 
ment less  or  more,  as  the  nature  and  circumstances 
of  the  offence  require.  I  insist  upon  conquering  the 
will  of  children  betimes,  because  this  is  the  only 


286  TWO  VIEWS  OF  EDUCATION 

strong  and  rational  foundation  of  a  religious  educa- 
tion, without  which,  both  precept  and  example  will  be 
ineffectual.  But  when  this  is  thoroughly  done,  then 
a  child  is  capable  of  being  governed  by  the  reason 
and  piety  of  its  parents  till  its  own  understanding 
comes  to  maturity,  and  the  principles  of  religion  have 
taken  root  in  the  mind.  .  .  . 

'The  children  of  this  family  were  taught,  as  soon 
as  they  could  speak,  the  Lord's  prayer,  which  they 
were  made  to  say  at  rising  and  bedtime  constantly; 
to  which,  as  they  grew  bigger,  were  added  a  short 
prayer  for  their  parents,  and  some  collects,  a  short 
catechism,  and  some  portion  of  Scripture,  as  their 
memories  could  bear.  They  were  very  early  made  to 
distinguish  the  Sabbath  from  other  days,  before  they 
could  well  speak  or  go.  They  were  as  soon  taught  to 
be  still  at  family  prayers,  and  to  ask  a  blessing  imme- 
diately after,  which  they  used  to  do  by  signs,  before 
they  could  kneel  or  speak. 

*  They  were  quickly  made  to  understand  they  might 
have  nothing  they  cried  for,  and  instructed  to  speak 
handsomely  for  what  they  wanted.  They  were  not 
suffered  to  ask  even  the  lowest  servant  for  aught  with- 
out saying,  ' '  Pray  give  me  such  a  thing ' ' ;  and  the 
servant  was  chid  if  she  ever  let  them  omit  that  word. 
Taking  God's  name  in  vain,  cursing  and  swearing,  pro- 
faneness,  obscenity,  rude  ill-bred  names,  were  never 
heard  among  them.  Nor  were  they  ever  permitted  to 
call  each  other  by  their  proper  names,  without  the 
addition  of ''Brother "or ''Sister."  .  .  . 

'There  was  no  such  thing  as  loud  talking  or  play- 
ing allowed  of,  but  every  one  was  kept  close  to  their 
business,  for  the  six  hours  of  school.  And  it  is  almost 
incredible  what  a  child  may  be  taught  in  a  quarter 
of  a  year  by  a  vigorous  application,  if  it  have  but  a 
tolerable  capacity  and  good  health.     Every  one  of 


ON  WHICH   SIDE  WE  ERR  287 

these,  Kezzy  excepted,  could  read  better  in  that  time 
than  the  most  of  women  can  do  as  long  as  they  live. '  ^ 

Again,  the  individual  teacher  must  consider  himself 
and  his  own  tendency,  and,  if  he  be  convicted  of  sin, 
must  strive  toward  the  opposite  pole  in  an  attempt  to 
become  a  virtuous  master  of  his  art  and  craft.  Does 
he  harp  immoderately  on  the  rudiments  of  diction 
and  grammar,  and  never  bring  his  pupils  to  think  of 
Latin  as  a  means  of  communication  between  intelli- 
gent human  beings?  Do  these  pupils  halt  and  stumble 
through  four,  or  it  may  be  six,  books  of  the  ^jieid 
without  ever  discovering  how  the  whole  great  epic 
works  out  at  the  end?  Do  they  toil  through  some 
hundred  lines  of  the'  Odyssey,  unaware  that  the  entire 
story  is  in  fact  the  most  captivating  romance  that 
could  possibly  fall  into  their  hands  ?  In  a  word,  does 
the  teacher  see  to  it  that  the  values  of  little  things 
(and  I  do  not  underrate  their  value)  are  properly  sub- 
ordinated to  the  values  of  great  ? 

But  leaving  the  possible  differences  in  the  needs  of 
other  times,  and  the  probable  differences  of  tendency 
among  individuals,  what  shall  we  say  of  the  general 
need  in  American  education  at  present?  Do  we  err 
on  the  side  of  too  much  or  too  little  severity  in  deal- 
ing with  the  inborn  and  acquired  inclinations  of  our 
charges?  "Who  will  contend  that  as  a  nation  we  are 
rigorous  enough  in  our  demands  upon  students?  I 
do  not  mean  that  we  are  not  asking  or  permitting 

*  John  Wesley,  Journal,  August,  1742,  iu  his  WorTcs,  fourth 
ed.,  1840,  1.  363-7.  Mrs.  Wesley  did  not  have  a  free  hand  with 
*  Kezzy.' 


288  TWO  VIEWS  OF  EDUCATION 

them  to  do  too  many  things,  since  the  very  multi- 
plicity of  studies  in  our  scheme  of  general  education 
savors  of  laxness  and  not  of  rigor.  But  what  has  be- 
come of  the  training  that  will  lead  a  boy  or  a  girl  to 
take  pains  ?  I  know  there  are  schools  where  the  intel- 
lectual discipline  is  effective.  But  in  general  have  we 
not  lost  sight  of  the  truth  that  the  subjects  we  teach 
are  a  means  and  not  an  end ;  that  by  aiming  to  pro- 
duce character  we  succeed  better  in  instilling  knowl- 
edge? Is  it  any  longer  the  common  belief  that  the 
promising  youth  is  the  one  who,  to  speak  in  terms  of 
Plato,  will  endure  the  lower,  immediate  pain  for  the 
sake  of  the  higher,  ultimate  satisfaction  ?  who  delights 
in  meeting  and  overcoming  difficulty  in  the  things  of 
the  mind  ?  who  will  take  up  his  cross  daily  with  glad- 
ness, and  endure  it  with  joy,  for  the  sake  of  the  crown 
gleaming  in  the  distance  ?  who  will  glorify  the  humble 
toil,  and  will  enjoy  the  high  reward  in  prospect? 

We  need  more  of  the  spirit  of  Calvin,  and  less  of 
the  spirit  of  Rousseau,  in  American  education.  When 
the  nation  has  been  tending  to  excess  in  one  direction, 
the  educational  leader  will  not  try  to  drive  it  into  a 
greater  excess  of  the  same  kind;  he  will  help,  where 
he  can,  to  restore  the  golden  mean.  All  honor,  then, 
to  the  teachers  of  the  ancient  classics.  They  con- 
stantly plead  for  those  studies  which  in  former  years 
have  proved  themselves  capable  of  furnishing  the  dis- 
cipline that  preserves  the  intellectual  life  of  the 
nation.  They  are  not  misled  by  superficial  distinctions 
between  the  old  and  the  new,  the  near  and  the  re- 
mote ;  for,  being  nourished  on  the  literatures  of  Greece 


EEGENERATION  289 

and  Rome,  from  which  the  chaff  has  been  blown  away, 
and  of  which  the  wheat  alone  remains,  they  hold  fast 
to  the  permanent  and  the  essential,  irrespective  of 
time  and  place. 

Yet  we  cannot  return  to  a  former  age  save  in  imagi- 
nation. If  it  be  true  that,  to  be  well  educated,  we 
must  be  born  again  and  must  become  as  little  children, 
nevertheless  we  cannot  actually  re-enter  the  womb  of 
time  and  again  ie  little  children.  The  study  of  the 
ancient  classics  can  never  again  be  what  it  was  before 
the  advent  in  the  curriculum  of  English  and  the 
modern  Continental  languages  and  literatures.  But 
it  can  be  more  than  ever  it  was  in  the  past  if  the 
teachers  of  all  the  humanities  will  co-operate  in  hand- 
ing on  the  tradition,  not  of  words,  but  of  ideas.  If 
classical  culture  is  to  perform  its  proper  function  in 
American  life,  we  must  not  simply  give  heed  to  the 
mint,  the  anise,  and  the  cummin  of  diction  and  syntax, 
neglecting  weightier  matters,  such  as  the  meaning  of 
a  work  of  literary  art  as  a  whole.  We  may  glorify 
the  detail  only  as  a  means  to  the  enjoyment  of  the 
entire  masterpiece. 

But,  after  all,  it  is  for  the  teachers  of  the  classics  to 
tell  us  moderns,  us  teachers  of  English,  French,  and 
German,  what  to  do.  It  is  our  place  to  encourage 
them,  and  theirs  to  admonish  us.  It  is  for  them  to 
insist  that  in  literary  and  linguistic  studies  we  should 
give  more  of  our  time  to  what  is  lasting,  and  less  to 
what  is  transient — more  to  the  works  of  Goethe,  Schil- 
ler, Heine,  and  Lessing,  than  to  Storm's  Immensee, 
Gerstacker's    Oermelshausen,   Heyse's   L'Arrabiiata, 


290  TWO  VIEWS  OF  EDUCATION 

Baumbaeh's  Das  Hahichtsfrdulein,  Leander's  Trdu- 
mereien,  and  Arnold's  Fritz  auf  Ferien;  more  to  the 
works  of  Comeille,  Pascal,  Boileau,  Moliere,  Racine, 
and  Bossuet,  than  to  Brunot's  Le  Tour  de  la  France 
par  deux  Enfants,  Malot's  8ans  Famille,  Saintine's 
Picciola,  Enault's  Chien  du  Capitaine,  Halevy's 
L'Ahhe  Constantin,  and  De  la  Brete's  Mon  Oncle  et 
moil  Cure.  Let  us  not  contend  that  contemporary  lit- 
erature has  no  place  in  the  curriculum,  but  let  us  say- 
that  its  place  is  very  limited,  since  only  a  small  frac- 
tion of  it  will  survive  and  prove  useful  in  the  future. 
The  Greek  and  Latin  authors,  as  we  have  them,  leave 
no  room  for  an  altogether  faulty  choice  of  subject- 
matter  in  a  teacher  with  an  inclination  toward  the 
trivial.  It  is  for  devotees  of  the  classics  to  insist  that 
we  pay  more  attention  to  the  ideas  of  Chaucer,  Spen- 
ser, Shakespeare,  and  Milton  than  to  those  of  the  Out- 
look and  the  Review  of  Reviews;  and  more  to  the  edu- 
cational theory  and  practice  of  Milton — a  great  writer, 
a  successful  teacher,  and  perhaps  the  best-read  man 
of  modern  times — ^than  to  the  shallow  and  ephemeral 
speculations  of  those  who  have  never  thought  out  the 
relation  of  the  past  ten  days,  or  weeks,  or  years,  to  the 
vast  remainder  of  human  experience.  It  is  for  them 
to  insist  also,  with  Milton,  that  'though  a  linguist 
should  pride  himself  to  have  all  the  tongues  that  Babel 
cleft  the  world  into,  yet  if  he  have  not  studied  the  solid 
things  in  them,  as  well  as  the  words  and  lexicons,  he 
were  nothing  so  much  to  be  esteemed  a  learned  man 
as  any  yeoman  or  tradesman  competently  wise  in  his 
moiher  dialect  only. '    It  is  for  students  of  Greek  and 


MILTON  AND  PEDAGOGY  291 

Latin  to  insist  that  there  is  no  'discipline'  without  the 
acquisition  of  'content,'  nor  any  true  acquisition  of 
content  without  strict  adherence  to  the  letter.  Is  it 
not  their  own  Horace  who  finally  teaches  and  pleases, 
both  in  one?  Is  it  not  he  and  his  master  Plato  who 
unite  precept  and  illuminating  example  in  such  fashion 
as  to  convince  us  that  no  lasting  pleasure  is  unprofit- 
able, and  no  true  learning  ultimately  unpleasant  ? 
*  The  labor  we  delight  in  physics  pain. ' 

The  frequent  reference  to  Milton's  tractate  Of 
Education  tliroughout  this  discussion  has  not  been 
undesigned.  The  work  makes  more  profitable  read- 
ing than  our  current  pedagogy,  or,  as  he  well  knew, 
the  current  pedagogy  of  his  own  day.  I  only  wish 
that  words  of  mine  might  cause  many  teachers  in 
the  land  to  take  its  wise  precepts  and  sound  philoso- 
phy to  heart.  We  may  without  impropriety  think 
of  the  author  as  a  follower  of  Calvin — so  are  we  all, 
in  a  sense ;  but  he  was  not  so  in  any  narrow  fashion. 
We  might,  on  some  grounds,  regard  him  as  a  pre- 
cursor of  Rousseau.  Certainly  in  the  tractate,  as 
elsewhere,  he  rises  above  the  level  of  dogmatism  and 
empiricism  to  a  conception  of  a  higher  expediency, 
in  physical,  mental,  and  spiritual  training,  not  far 
short  of  the  highest.  If  he  errs  at  all,  he  does  so 
in  ways  that  cannot  harm  any  one  in  our  generation. 
In  trying  to  suggest  an  ideal  by  approaching  it  from 
either  side,  we  may  use  him  as  an  illustration  of  one 
aspect  rather  than  the  other;  but  he  actually  ap- 
proximates the  ideal  more  nearly  than  any  one 
writing  in  the  present  day.    Need  I  explain  that  I 


292  TWO  VIEWS  OF  EDUCATION 

have  in  mind  the  Christian  ideal  of  education  ?  This 
is  the  education  that  gives  a  man  absolute  power 
over  himself — the  power  to  lay  down  his  life  and 
the  power  to  take  it  up  again,  that  is  to  say,  com- 
plete capacity  both  negative  and  positive.  It  enables 
the  individual  to  treat  his  neighbor  as  well  as  him- 
self, and  himself  as  well  as  his  neighbor ;  to  flee  from 
pain  or  to  face  it ;  to  reject  pleasure  or  to  accept  it ; 
to  offer  his  face  for  a  second  blow  from  an  enemy 
or  to  chastise  a  friend — or  to  forgive  a  wife  or  a 
brother;  to  follow  a  line  of  conduct  in  steadfastness 
or  to  take  up  another  with  the  swiftness  of  light- 
ning ;  to  be  both  flexible  and  inflexible ;  to  bring  forth 
out  of  his  treasure  things  new  and  old.  In  educa- 
tion, as  Milton  knew,  the  emphasis  will  commonly  lie 
upon  one  side  more  than  the  other;  more  upon  duty 
to  one's  neighbor,  less  upon  duty  to  oneself,  or  the 
true  balance  will  not  be  struck;  more  upon  facing 
pain  and  rejecting  pleasure,  and  upon  steadfastness 
of  aim,  than  upon  their  opposites.  Need  I  add  that 
the  stress  will  be  more  upon  the  tradition  of  the  last 
twenty-five  centuries  and  less  upon  the  tradition  of 
the  last  twenty-five  years;  more  upon  training  in 
the  classical  languages  and  literatures  and  less  upon 
training  in  French  and  German;  more  upon  'disci- 
pline' in  a  higher  sense  and  less  upon  'content'  in  a 
lower?  Let  me  illustrate.  Is  it  not  better  to  learn 
a  few  passages  of  Homer,  Virgil,  and  the  New  Testa- 
ment by  heart  than  to  read  the  contents  of  the  Sun- 
day newspaper? 

"We  have  heard  of  late,  from  persons  whose  names 
will  be  forgotten  in  a  very  little  while,  that  disci- 


MILTON  ON  'DISCIPLINE'  293 

pline  is  of  very  little  value.  In  opposition  to  this 
superficial  view  I  venture  to  quote  another  passage 
from  an  author  whose  name  will  be  remembered,  and 
whose  words  will  be  listened  to,  so  long  as  the  Eng- 
lish language  shall  be  intelligible  to  educated  men — 
Milton,  On  the  Reason  of  Church  Government: 

*  There  is  not  that  thing  in  the  world  of  more  grave 
and  urgent  importance,  throughout  the  whole  life  of 
man,  than  is  discipline.  What  need  I  instance?  He 
that  hath  read  with  judgment  of  nations  and  com- 
monwealths, of  cities  and  camps,  of  peace  and  war, 
sea  and  land,  will  readily  agree  that  the  flourishing 
and  decaying  of  all  civil  societies,  all  the  moments 
and  turnings  of  human  occasions,  are  moved  to  and 
fro  as  upon  the  axle  of  discipline.  So  that  whatso- 
ever power  or  sway  in  mortal  things  weaker  men 
have  attributed  to  fortune,  I  durst  with  more  con- 
fidence (the  honor  of  Divine  Providence  ever  saved) 
ascribe  either  to  the  vigor  or  the  slackness  of  disci- 
pline. Nor  is  there  any  sociable  perfection  in  this 
life,  civil  or  sacred,  that  can  be  above  discipline; 
but  she  is  that  which  with  her  musical  cords^  pre- 
serves and  holds  all  the  parts  thereof  together.  .  .  . 
And  certainly  discipline  is  not  only  the  removal  of 
disorder,  but,  if  any  visible  shape  can  be  given  to 
divine  things,  the  very  visible  shape  and  image  of 
virtue;  whereby  she  is  not  only  seen  in  the  regular 
gestures  and  motions  of  her  heavenly  paces  as  she 
walks,  but  also  makes  the  harmony  of  her  voice 
audible  to  mortal  ears. '  ^ 

*  Milton  plays  on  the  word,  which  in  his  orthography  is  equiva- 
lent to  chords. 

'  Milton,  Prose  WorTcs,  ed.  by  St.  John,  2.  441-2. 


20 


APPENDIX 

A  COURSE  IN  TRANSLATIONS  OF  THE 
CLASSICS  ^ 

'English  Translations  of  Greek  and  Latin  Classics' 
is  the  title  of  a  course  I  have  for  more  than  fifteen 
years  given  annually  at  Cornell  University,  with 
what  the  reader  will  pardon  me  for  deeming  excel- 
lent results.  For  the  sake  of  those  who  may  be 
tempted  to  give,  or  to  follow,  a  similar  course,  I 
shall  set  forth  the  principles  underlying  this  one, 
and  shall  sketch  the  actual  work  done  by  a  typical 
class  preparing  a  weekly  written  report  or  paper 
for  some  thirty-two  weeks. 

It  must  first  of  all  be  noted  that  the  work  in  ques- 
tion, while  intended  to  serve  the  special  ends  of  stu- 
dents of  English  (in  select  groups  of  ten  or  twelve), 
is  not  designed  to  supplant  any  part  of  the  intensive 
study  of  Greek  and  Latin  literature  in  the  original 
tongues.  Actually,  those  who  have  hitherto  done 
best  in  the  course  have  with  few  exceptions  been 
students  of  Greek  and  Latin  to  begin  with.  Others, 
coming  to  the  university  with  no  knowledge  of  Greek, 
have  been  convinced  by  their  work  with  translations 
that  an  educated  man  cannot  afford  to  be  ignorant 

*  My  description  of  this  course  was  first  published  in  The 
Classical  WeeTcly  for  November,  1917,  at  the  suggestion  of  the 
managing  editor;  materials  there  appearing  are  here  utilized 
with  his  kind  consent.  In  its  present  shape  the  description  is 
somewhat  expanded. 

294 


A  COUESE  IN  TEANSLATIONS  295 

of  that  language,  and  accordingly  have  promptly 
taken  up  the  study  of  it. 

Yet  the  course  is  based  upon  the  assumption  that 
the  teacher  of  the  classics  has  not  always  made  the 
best  use  of  his  opportunities.  The  mainspring  of  the 
work  is  the  application  of  classical  theories  of  liter- 
ary art  to  masterpieces  of  classical  literature,  in  so 
far  as  this  is  possible  through  the  best  English  trans- 
lations. And  through  this  medium  it  is  possible  to 
enforce  lessons  of  the  utmost  value,  which  so  far  as 
I  can  leam  have  been  sadly  neglected  in  almost  every 
part  of  America.  Through  this  medium,  with  princi- 
ples supplied  by  the  ancients  themselves,  one  may 
teach  a  Sophomore  to  regard  the  Odyssey  as  an 
organic  work  of  art,  with  a  beginning,  middle,  and 
end — as  a  unified  whole,  in  the  light  of  which  every 
detail  is  to  be  interpreted;  and  then  to  regard  the 
(Edipus  Bex  of  Sophocles  in  a  similar  fashion;  and 
to  go  on  to  other  masterpieces,  with  the  same  intent 
— learning  the  universal  laws  of  artistic  structure  as 
they  are  not  learned  in  classes  where  fifty  lines  a 
day  are  read  in  the  original,  chopped  off  irrespective 
of  the  natural  joints,  where  the  emphasis  is  laid  first 
upon  diction  and  syntax,  and  secondly  upon  realien 
(appropriated  by  American  text-books  from  German 
ones),  and  where  the  pupil  at  best  makes  an  occa- 
sional inference  concerning  the  portrayal  of  charac- 
ter, the  structure  of  a  speech,  or  the  treatment  of  an 
incident  in  and  for  itself. 

The  course  is,  then,  I  trust,  formal  in  the  better 
sense  of  that  word :  fundamental  laws  are  illustrated 
by  specific  examples,  the  union  of  the  two  being  ef- 


296  APPENDIX 

fected  by  the  student  for  himself,  with  the  minimum 
amount  of  obvious  help  from  the  teacher.  However, 
much  substantial  information  in  the  usual  sense  is 
absorbed  by  the  student;  for  throughout  the  aca- 
demic year  he  thrice  returns  to  tasks  requiring  a 
survey  of  ancient  mythology;  a  rough  chronological 
sequence  is  generally  maintained  in  all  he  does;  and 
at  the  close  of  the  second  semester  he  applies  what 
he  has  previously  learned  to  the  study  of  several 
topics  in  English  literature.  It  will  be  seen  that  an 
attempt  has  been  made  to  convert  the  whole  into  a 
kind  of  drama,  itself  with  a  beginning,  middle,  and 
end,  the  successive  efforts  of  the  class  being,  as  it 
were,  so  many  incidents  following  one  another  in  a 
natural,  if  not  always  an  inevitable,  sequence. 
Ideally,  no  doubt,  the  sequence  of  any  course  of 
study  should  be  inevitable ;  but  in  practice  incidental 
concessions  must  now  and  then  be  allowed  to  the 
actual  needs  of  the  student.  This  course  in  transla- 
tions may  therefore  be  described  as  sufficiently  theoret- 
ical, but  with  a  slight  leaning  to  the  practical  be- 
cause most  of  those  who  take  it  wish  ultimately  to 
specialize  in  English. 

At  the  first  meeting  of  the  class,  I  am  in  the  habit 
of  making  a  few  remarks,  in  substance  as  follows: 

There  are  persons  who  decry  translations.  Yet 
men  of  sound  learning  and  good  judgment  make  and 
publish  them.  Why  do  they?  According  to  Lord 
Morley,  'Scholars  of  great  eminence  and  consum- 
mate accomplishments,  like  Jowett,  Lang,  Myers, 
Leaf,  and  others,  bring  all  their  scholarship  to  bear, 
in  order  to  provide  for  those  who  are  not  able,  or 
do  not  care,  to  read  old  classics  in  the  originals, 


A  COURSE  IN  TRANSLATIONS  297 

brilliant  and  faithful  renderings  of  them  in  our  own 
tongue.'  And  he  adds:  'Nothing  but  good,  I  am 
persuaded,  can  come  of  all  these  attempts  to  connect 
learning  with  the  living  forces  of  society. '  ^  There 
is  the  answer  in  a  nutshell.  If  it  needs  corrobora- 
tion, we  have  only  to  recall  that  the  most  valuable 
and  influential  book  ever  printed  in  the  English 
language  is  a  translation — the  Authorized  Version 
of  the  Bible. 

The  object  of  this  course,  stated  in  one  way,  is  to 
connect  learning  with  the  forces  of  the  student's 
life.  Much  of  the  classical  study  that  is  done  in  our 
schools  is  regarded,  and  to  some  extent  justly,  as  a 
study  of  'dead'  languages.  At  the  moment,  we  do 
not  need  to  ask  whether  the  Greek  and  Latin  tongues 
can  be  revived  in  most  of  us.  Let  us  say  that  they 
should  be  whenever  they  can  be.  But  we  all  know 
that,  as  these  two  languages  are  taught  in  America  to- 
day, very  few  students  ever  reach  the  stage  of  profi- 
ciency where  either  of  them  becomes  in  all  essentials 
a  living  medium  of  communication  between  the  author 
and  the  reader.  How  many  of  you  have  ever  been 
able  to  appreciate  an  entire  work  of  literary  art  like 
the  ^neid  or  the  Odyssey  in  the  original!  Even  a 
thorough  scholar  is  likely  to  find  that  his  attention 
is  divided;  he  must  now  and  then  stop  to  puzzle  out 
the  words,  and  cannot  always  give  his  whole  mind 
to  the  substance  of  what  he  is  reading.  Yet  every 
time  the  mind  is  forced  to  halt  over  the  meaning  of 
a  phrase,  some  part  of  the  effect  of  a  piece  of  litera- 
ture as  a  whole  is  almost  certain  to  be  lost. 

This  is  a  course  in  literature.  You  will  treat 
individual  masterpieces  as  works  of  art,  taking  up 
important  things  one  by  one,  a  whole  one  at  a  time. 
In  your  work  in  Greek  and  Latin  you  have  been  ac- 
customed to  pay  more  attention  to  small  details  than 
to  large  ones.    Here  you  will  give  more  attention  to 

'  Studies  in  Literature,  p.  192. 


298  APPENDIX 

the  larger  details  of  structure.  No  detail,  however 
small,  is  unimportant  in  a  work  of  art,  but  we  have 
authority  in  the  words  of  Aristotle,  the  greatest  critic 
produced  by  antiquity,  for  believing  that  some  de- 
tails are  of  more  consequence  than  others,  and  that 
the  plot  or  main  idea  of  a  poem  is  by  far  the 
most  important  thing  of  all — just  as  the  plan  of  a 
building  is  more  important  than  the  particular  sort 
of  stone  employed  in  its  construction.  The  plan  is 
not  independent  of  the  kind  of  material  in  which  it 
is  to  be  worked  out;  yet,  after  all,  one  may  use 
virtually  the  same  plan  for  a  house  of  marble  or  a 
house  of  granite ;  either  building  would  serve  the 
same  purpose — it  is  the  plan  that  counts.  The  same 
is  true  of  an  epic  poem,  whether  in  the  original 
Greek  or  in  a  faithful  English  translation.  And  for 
us  the  structure  is  more  easily  discerned  in  an  Eng- 
lish translation  than  in  the  Greek  or  Latin  original. 

The  wealth  of  material  at  our  command  necessi- 
tates selection,  and  where  all  is  good  selection  is  dif- 
ficult. We  cannot  avoid  the  omission  of  works  that 
every  one  should  read.  You  must  therefore  regard 
the  books  we  are  now  to  study  as  but  a  centre  for 
your  own  individual  reading  later  on. 

Human  culture  is  continuous.  Until  you  have  read 
and  meditated  for  some  years,  you  cannot  afford  to 
bear  very  heavily  upon  what  seem  to  be  the  differ- 
ences between  ancient  and  modern  times.  As  far 
as  possible  give  up  the  distinction  between  'ancient' 
and  'modern,'  and  substitute  the  distinction  between 
'permanent'  and  'transitory.' 

Pay  only  moderate  attention  to  what  you  read  or 
hear  about  the  classics,  but  much  attention  to  what 
you  can  find  in  them  for  yourself.  Observe  for  your- 
self;  never  relinquish  the  process. 

After  these  remarks  I  distribute  copies  of  a  printed 
leaflet   containing    a    number    of   requirements   and 


A  COURSE  IN  TRANSLATIONS  299 

recommendations  for  the  course,  and  a  brief  list  of 
books  for  general  reference,  as  follows: 

A  knowledge  of  Greek  and  Latin,  though  desir- 
able, is  not  required,  the  work  of  this  course  being 
independent  of  any  language  but  English.  Rapid 
reading  will  be  done  in  the  best  translations,  with 
emphasis  upon  Greek  masterpieces — for  example,  the 
Iliad  and  the  Odyssey,  selected  plays  of  Sophocles, 
and  selected  dialogues  of  Plato.  Translations  from 
the  Latin  will  be  chosen  for  the  bearing  of  the  origin- 
als on  modern  literature.  There  will  be  papers  and 
discussions. 

1.  Students  are  urged  to  own  as  many  of  the  books 
employed  in  the  course  as  circumstances  permit,  and 
to  form  the  habit  of  marginal  annotation. 

2.  A  general  knowledge  of  the  life  of  each  author 
studied  may  be  obtained  from  the  works  of  refer- 
ence recommended  in  the  accompanying  list. 

3.  Students  must  become  familiar  with  classical 
geography;  see  the  atlases  noted  in  the  list.  It  is 
desirable  that  each  secure  a  map  of  the  eastern 
Mediterranean,  to  be  hung  near  his  desk. 

4.  Punctuality  in  work  and  attendance  is  impera- 
tive. Under  ordinary  circumstances  work  that  is 
behindhand  will  not  be  accepted.  By  an  unexcused 
absence  the  student  indicates  his  willingness  to  fail  in 
the  course. 

5.  The  work  of  the  first  semester  is  so  related  to  that 
of  the  second  that  it  is  desirable  to  take  the  course 
either  throughout  the  academic  year,  or  not  at  all. 

6.  The  formal  work  of  the  course  will  consist  of 
weekly  papers  or  reports,  to  be  read  and  discussed  in 
class.  These  papers  and  reports  each  student  is  to 
preserve,  in  proper  sequence,  in  a  note-book  kept  solely 
for  this  purpose.  The  note-books  may  be  called  for  at 
any  time ;  they  will  be  submitted  to  the  instructor  at 
the  last  meeting  of  the  class  before  the  term  examina- 
tions. 


300  APPENDIX 

7.  Appointments  for  personal  conference  will  be 
arranged. 

Careful  reading  should  precede  all  writing.  The 
object  of  each  paper  or  report  should  be  thoroughness 
and  truth.  Literary  finish  and  individuality  of  ex- 
pression are  desirable. 

The  aim  of  the  course  is  a  lasting  acquaintance  with 
classic  story  and  ideals,  as  an  indispensable  basis  for 
the  appreciation  of  English  literature. 

Among  works  of  reference  the  following  are  recom- 
mended : 

Histories  of  Greece  Histories  of  Greek  Literature 

Grote  Jebb,  Primer 

Curtius  Mueller 

Bury  Croiset 

(The    best    work    under    this 
head,  Croiset,  should  be 
History  of  Rome  consulted,  by  those  who 

Mommsen  read  French,  in  the  un- 

abridged edition.) 

Atlases  Histories  of  Latin  Literature 

Sieglin  Duff 

Ei«Pef<^  Sellar 

Teuffel 

General  Encyclopsedia  .  •    i    a 

EncyclopcBdia  Britannica        Dictionaries  of  Classical  An- 
tiquities 
Smith 
Encyclopsedia  of  History  Harper 

Ploetz,  Epitome  Seyffert 

There  are  bad  books  as  well  as  good ;  for  the  pur- 
poses of  this  course  make  use  of  no  work  save  those 
that  are  recommended,  without  consulting  the  in- 
structor. 

The  leaflet,  it  will  be  observed,  aims  at  simplicity. 
It  would  be  a  mistake,  for  example,  to  discourage  the 
undergraduate  by  mentioning  too  many  unfamiliar 
books  at  the  outset.    The  class  is  expected  to  procure 


A  COURSE  IN  TRANSLATIONS  301 

my  version  of  the  Poetics  of  Aristotle  (Ginn^),  The 
Greek  Genius  and  its  Influence  (Yale  University 
Press),  Jebb's  translation,  in  one  volume,  of  Sopho- 
cles (Cambridge  University  Press),  the  Iliad,  in  the 
translation  of  Lang,  Leaf,  and  Myers  (Macmillan), 
and  the  Odyssey  in  that  of  Butcher  and  Lang  (Mac- 
mdllan).  In  general,  one  may.  either  own  the  books 
employed,  or  use  the  duplicate  copies  in  the  Univer- 
sity Library. 

Here  follows  a  scheme  of  the  work,  arranged 
according  to  weeks. 

1.  Read  at  least  three,  and  preferably  more,  of  the 
selections  in  Cooper,  The  Greek  Genius  and  its  Influ- 
ence; abstract  what  you  deem  of  special  importance; 
and  combine  in  a  paper  of  about  500  words. 

2.  Report  upon  what  you  think  important  or  doubt- 
ful in  the  first  fifteen  chapters  of  the  Poetics  of  Aris- 
totle. The  use  of  the  introductory  matter  in  my  ver- 
sion of  the  Poetics  is  optional. 

3.  Report  on  the  remainder  of  the  Poetics;  where 
you  can,  supply  examples  of  your  own. 

4.  Paper  applying  the  principles  of  Aristotle  to 
the  Biblical  story  of  Joseph  in  Genesis  37,  39-45. 
Memorize  the  speech  of  Zeus  on  fate  and  free  will, 
near  the  beginning  of  the  Odyssey  (1.32-43;  Butcher 
and  Lang,  p.  2) ,  and  the  speech  of  Creon  when  he  first 
sees  the  body  of  his  son,  in  Sophocles'  Antigone  (lines 
1261-9  ;Jebb,  p.  169). 

5.  Report  on  Butcher,  Aristotle's  Theory  of  Poetry 
and  Fine  Art  (Macmillan),  chapters  6,  7,  8,  9,  in  the 
commentary  following  the  Poetics. 

1  Now  (1922)  published  by  Hareourt,  Braee  and  Co. 


302  APPENDIX 

6.  Paper  on  the  plot  of  the  Odyssey,  in  the  trans- 
lation of  Butcher  and  Lang. 

7.  Report  upon  Longinus  On  the  Suhlime,  trans, 
by  Havell,  in  Cooper,  Theories  of  Style  (Maemillan), 
or  by  Prickard  (Oxford  University  Press)  ;  compare 
the  edition  (with  an  excellent  translation)  by  Rhys 
Roberts  (Cambridge  University  Press),  especially  pp. 
23-37. 

8.  Characters:  Aristotle,  Poetics,  as  before;  Rhet- 
oric, trans,  by  Jebb  (Camb.  Univ.  Press)  or  by  Well- 
don  (Maemillan),  Book  2,  chapters  12-17;  Nico- 
machean  Ethics,  trans,  by  Welldon  (Maemillan),  Book 
4,  chapters  6,  7,  8,  9 ;  Plato,  character  of  the  Philos- 
opher King  in  Republic,  trans,  by  Davies  and 
Vaughan  (Maemillan)  or  by  Jowett  (Oxford  Press), 
Book  6;  Theophrastus',  Characters,  trans,  by  Jebb 
(Maemillan)  or  by  Bennett  and  Hammond  (Long- 
mans, Green) — read  a  number  of  the  sketches. 
Optional :  Gordon,  Theophrastus  and  his  Imitators,  in 
English  Literature  and  the  Classics,  ed.  by  Gordon 
( Oxford  Press) .    Report. 

9.  Paper  applying  the  principles  of  the  Poetics, 
Rhetoric,  and  Ethics  of  Aristotle  to  the  agents  in  the 
Iliad,  in  the  translation  by  Lang,  Leaf,  and  Myers. 

10.  Report  or,  preferably,  paper  on  Hesiod,  Works 
and  Days  and  Theogony,  trans,  by  Mair  (Oxford 
Press)  or  Evelyn-White  (Loeb  Classical  Library). 
Suggestion:  apply  the  principles  of  Longinus  to 
Hesiod. 

11.  Grote,  History  of  Greece  (Everyman's  Li- 
brary, Dent  or  Button),  Volume  1,  chapters  1  (as  far 


A  COURSE  IN  TRANSLATIONS  303 

as  'Hymn  to  Dionysus'),  2,  3,  5,  6,  7,  10,  12,  13. 
Note  four  centres  of  early  Grecian  story;  in  particu- 
lar, the  Calydonian  Hunt,  and  the  tale  of  the  Argo- 
nauts.   Eeport,  condensing  and  paraphrasing. 

12.  Grote,  Volume  1  (partly  in  Volume  2  in  Every- 
maai's  Library),  chapters  14,  15  (as  far  as  'Histori- 
cizing  Innovations'),  16  (as  far  as  'Gradual  Develop- 
ment of  the  Scientific  Point  of  View').  Note  in 
particular  the  legendary  history  of  Thebes,  and  the 
Trojan  Cycle.  Read  also  Virgil  ^neid,  Book  2,  in 
the  original  or  trans,  by  Mackail  (Macmillan)  or  by 
Conington  (Scott,  Foresman)  or  by  Jackson  (Oxford 
Press).  Compare  Jebb's  account  of  the  Trojan  Cycle 
in  his  Greek  Literature  (Literature  Primers,  Ameri- 
can Book  Co.).    Report. 

[  12a.  Paper  applying  the  principles  of  Longinus  to 
Pindar,  Odes,  trans,  by  Myers  (Macmillan)  or  by 
Sandys  (Loeb  Classical  Library),  Olym.  1,  2,  3,  7; 
Pyth.  1,  3,  4,  10 ;  Nem.  5,  10 ;  Isth.  2,  7.  Consult  Gil- 
dersleeve  's  edition  of  the  Olympian  and  Pythian  Odes 
(Harper),  Introduction,  pp.  vii-xlvi.  Those  who  read 
French  are  referred  to  Croiset,  La  Paesie  de  Pindare 
(Hachette) .  (The  work  on  Pindar  is  given  or  omitted 
according  to  the  capacity  and  maturity,  or  the  reverse, 
of  the  class.)] 

13.  Report  on  Haigh,  The  Attic  Theatre  (Oxford 
Press),  1907,  pp.  1-17,  23^,  30,  34-5,  39,  44,  49,  51,  53, 
60-61,  65-6,  68-9,  72,  79,  179-180,  186,  195,  202-5, 
209-10,  213,  215,  227,  238,  242-3,  245,  252-3,  268,  272, 
285-6,  289,  291,  311-2,  317,  319,  323,  325,  338,  342-8. 
Consult  The  Greek  Genius  and  its  Influence,  pp.  77- 


304  APPENDIX 

84,  especially  77,  note  2,  and  Fliekinger,  The  Greek 
Theater  and  its  Drama  (University  of  Chicago  Press). 

14.  Paper  on  ^schylus,  Agamemnon,  trans,  by 
Headlam  (Bell)  or  by  Plumptre  (Heath)  or  by  Swan- 
wick  (Bell).  Refer,  possibly  with  caution,  to  the 
edition  by  Verrall  (Macmillan). 

15.  Paper  on  ^schylus,  Choephori,  trans,  by  Tucker 
(Camb.  Univ.  Press)  or  by  Verrall  (Macmillan),  and 
Eumenides,  trans,  by  Tucker  (Macmillan)  ;  or  use  any 
one  of  the  translations  mentioned  under  No.  14. 

16.  Paper  on  Sophocles,  Electra,  trans,  by  Jebb, 

17.  Paper  on  Sophocles,  CEdipus  Rex,  trans,  by 
Jebb. 

18.  Paper  on  Euripides,  Iphigeneia  in  Tauris, 
trans,  by  Murray  (George  Allen)  or  by  Way  (Mac- 
millan) or  by  E.  P.  Coleridge  (Bell).  Note  the 
references  to  Euripides,  and  to  this  tragedy,  in  the 
Poetics  of  Aristotle. 

19.  Read  Croiset,  Abridged  History  of  Greek 
Literature,  trans,  by  Heffelbower  (Macmillan),  pp. 
229-264;  paper  on  the  Birds  of  Aristophanes,  trans, 
by  Rogers  (Bell)  or  by  Frere  (World's  Classics, 
Oxford  Press). 

20.  Paper  on  Aristophanes,  the  Frogs,  trans,  by 
Rogers  (Bell)  or  by  Murray  (George  Allen).  Refer 
to  Cooper,  An  Aristotelian  Theory  of  Comedy  (forth- 
coming), and  to  Starkie's  edition  of  the  Acharnians 
(Macmillan),  Introduction,  pp.  xxxviii-lxxiv.  Op- 
tional :  Meredith,  An  Essay  on  Comedy,  ed.  by  Cooper 
(Scribner's  Sons). 

21.  Read  Duff,  A  Literary  History  of  Rome 
(Fisher  Unwin),  pp.  156-201;  refer  to  Aristotle  and 


A  COURSE  IN  TRANSLATIONS  305 

Theophrastus  on  the  Characters  (see  No.  8)  ;  paper 
on  Plautus,  Trinummus,  trans,  by  Sibley  (Syracuse, 
N.  y.,  1895,  C.  C.  De  Puy)  or  by  Riley  (Bell)  or  by 
Nixon  (Loeb  Classical  Library).  Optional:  consult 
Legrand,  The  New  Greek  Comedy,  trans,  by  Loeb 
(Putnam's  Sons). 

22.  Read  Duff,  pp.  203-219 ;  paper  on  Terence, 
Heauton  Timommenos,  trans,  by  Sargeaunt  (Loeb 
Classical  Library)  or  by  Stock  (Oxford,  Blackwell). 
Optional:  consult  Bond,  Early  Plays  from  the  Italian 
(Oxford  Press). 

23.  Paper  on   Plato,   PhcEdrus,  trans,   by  Jowett 

(Oxford  Press). 

24.  Paper  on  Plato,  Apology,  trans,  by  Jowett 
(Oxford  Press)  ;  test  the  dialogue  by  Aristotelian 
principles  as  a  work  of  the  imagination,  designed  to 
produce  an  effect  upon  the  emotions. 

25.  Paper  or  report  on  Plato,  Ion,  trans,  by  Jowett 
(Oxford  Press);  Republic,  trans,  by  Davies  and 
Vaughan  (Macmillan)  or  by  Jowett  (Oxford  Press), 
opening  of  Book  1,  end  of  Book  2  and  beginning  of 
Book  3,  beginning  of  Book  7,  and  Book  10. 

26.  Paper  or  report  on  Quintilian,  Education  of 
an  Orator,  trans,  by  Butler  (Loeb  Classical  Library) 
or  by  Watson  (Bell),  Book  1,  chap.  1,  chap.  10.  9- 
26-  Book  2,  chap.  1,  chap.  5.  5-8,  chap.  19,  chap.  20; 
Book  7,  Introd. ;  Book  8,  Introd.  1-22,  chap.  1,  chap. 
2  22-24,  chap.  3.  1-11,  chap.  5.  26-34,  chap.  6.  1- 
23;  Book  9,  chap.  4.  1-14,  16,  19,  33-37,  45-78,  116- 
119-  Book  10,  chap.  1  (except  52-60,  62-64,  74-75, 
87-92    97-98,  101-104,  118-131),  the  rest  of  Book 


306  APPENDIX 

10  (except  chap.  6) ;  Book  11,  chap.  1.  1-9,  chap.  2. 
1-5;  Book  12,  chap.  1,  chap.  2,  chap.  3,  chap.  4. 
Optional:  compare  Ben  Jonson,  Discoveries,  ed.  by 
Castelain  (Hachette),  pp.  81-116,  and  Milton,  Of 
Education,  ed.  by  Lockwood  (Houghton  Mifflin). 
{Of  Education,  ed.  by  Oliver  M.  Ainsworth,  in 
preparation.) 

27.  Paper  on  Horace,  Ars  Poetica,  trans,  by 
Howes,  in  Cook,  The  Art  of  Poetry  (Ginn),  or  by 
Conington  (Bell). 

28.  Paper  on  Seneca,  The  Daughters  of  Troy, 
trans,  by  Harris  (Oxford  Press).  Consult  Osgood 
in  American  Journal  of  Philology  26.  343,  and  Cam- 
hridge  History  of  English  Literature,  Volume  5,  In- 
dex, s.  V.  'Seneca.'  Optional:  consult  Cunliffe, 
Early  English  Classical  Tragedies  (Oxford  Press). 

29.  Paper  or  report  on  Ovid,  Metamorphoses,  trans, 
by  Golding,  in  Shakespeare's  Ovid,  ed.  by  Rouse 
(King's  Library,  De  La  More  Press),  or  trans,  by 
Riley  (Bell),  Books  1,  2,  3,  5,  6,  7,  and  in  Book  4 
the  story  of  Pyramus  and  Thisbe.  Optional:  com- 
pare Hawthorne,  The  Snow  Image  and  Feathertop; 
Ruskin,  The  King  of  the  Golden  Biver,  chap.  2; 
Shakespeare,  A  Midsummer-Night's  Dream;  Thack- 
eray, The  Rose  and  the  Ring.  Suggestion  for  a 
paper:  the  relation  of  the  'metamorphosis'  to  the 
Aristotelian  'discovery.' 

30.  Paper  or  report  on  Root,  Classical  Mythology 
in  Shakespeare  (Yale  University  Press).  Consult 
Anders,  Shakespeare's  Books  (Berlin,  Reimer,  1904). 
Optional :  consult  Tucker,  The  Foreign  Delt  of  Eng- 
lish Literature  (Bell). 


A  COURSE  IN  TRANSLATIONS  307 

31.  Paper  on  Osgood,  The  Classical  Mythology  of 
Milton's  English  Poems  (Yale  University  Press). 

32.  Study  Milton,  Paradise  Lost,  Books  1  and  2, 
ed.  by  Cook  (Boston,  Sibley).  Study  Preface,  In- 
troduction, and  Notes  to  Book  1,  lines  1-49,  in  this 
edition,  and  otherwise  read  as  much  as  possible  of 
the  poem.    No  paper  or  report. 

[32a.  No.  32  may  be  divided  into  halves,  if  the 
schedule  permits,  and  then  the  intensive  study  of  a 
few  lines  at  the  beginning  of  the  poem  will  consti- 
tute the  final  task  for  the  year.  At  the  last  meeting 
of  the  class,  the  students  are  advised  to  read  further 
in  Milton  during  the  summer.] 

I  shall  not  attempt  to  defend  particular  choices 
in  respect  to  the  masterpieces  read,  or  the  books 
used,  or  the  order  of  the  assigned  tasks.  The  selec- 
tion of  the  parts  and  the  order  of  the  whole  have 
been  modified,  though  not  essentially,  in  the  lapse  of 
years,  and  may  be  said  to  represent  the  best  I  can 
devise  in  view  of  the  accessible  means,  and  the  kind 
of  student  to  be  dealt  with.  I  have  a  firm  belief  in 
the  efficacy  of  the  course.  A  somewhat  detailed  ac- 
count of  it  has  been  given,  because  frequent  inquiries 
are  made  concerning  it,  because  there  would  be  no 
great  difficulty  in  adapting  it  to  conditions  in  other 
institutions,  and  because,  in  my  opinion,  too  much, 
relatively,  is  said  and  printed  on  the  ways  in  which 
teaching  should  be  done,  and  too  little  on  the  actual 
working  out  of  courses  in  which  theory  and  practice 
are  combined,  and  which  have  lived  long  enough  to 
justify  their  existence. 


INDEX 


[The  names  of  authors  and  titles  of  books  listed  on  pp,  300- 
307  of  the  Appendix  are  here  omitted,  together  with  a  few 
names  and  titles,  mentioned  only  for  precision  of  reference,  in 
the  footnotes  at  the  beginning  of  each  article  in  this  volume 
and  in  a  few  other  footnotes.] 


AihS     Constaniin,     Hal4vy's 

290 
Abelard  16,  220 
Acad6mie  Fran^aise  200,  208 
Achillea  180 
Achilles  Tatius  14 
Addison  64 
Address    to    the    Unco    Guid, 

Burns'  74 
Adonais,  Shelley's  23 
Advancement      of     Learning, 

Bacon's  74 n.,  75,  116 
^gean  bards  3 
^If  ric  266 
-^neas  10 

^neid  173  n.,  177,  287,  297 
^schylus  7,  8,  10,  13,  143 
Agamemnon,       Shakespeare 's 

29 
Alcibiades  7 
Alcuin  220,  259,  266 
Aldhelm  266 
Alexander  246 
Alexandria    11,    14,    24,    246, 

259,  262 
Alfred  264 
Allen  175 
AUingham  82  n. 
America  27,  34,  41,  53,  65,  66, 

73,    75,    95,    105-107,    121, 

127,  134,  138,  139,  146,  149, 

150,  152,  153,  156-159,  172, 
■'  179,  183,  189,  191,  200,  205, 


215,  224^226,  230,  231,  234, 

239,  240,  243-245,  268,  270, 

272,  276,  283,  287-289,  295 
Amherst  College  279 
Amyot  22 

Anabasis,  Xenophon's  178 
Anaxagoras  6 
Ancient  and   Modern  Letters 

15-29 
Angell  44 
Angellier  261 
Angles  58,  62 
'  Anglo-Saxon  '  (See  also  Old 

English.)       58,      69,      254, 

254  n.,  265 
Antigone,  Sophocles'  9 
Antony   and    Cleopatra, 

Shakespeare's  21 
Apology,    Plato's    157,    184, 

185 
Apology     for     SmectymnvMS, 

Milton's  85 
Arabia  11,  259 
Arachne  148,  152 
Archipelago  2 
Argos  2 

Aristophanes  7,  8,  13,  33 
Aristotle  4,  7,  10,  11,  14,  17, 

46,   93,   126,  130,   142,   143, 

148-150,  164,  172,  199,  212, 

219,  220,  233,  246.  253,  254, 

256,  259,  277,  282 
Arnold,  H.  290 


21 


309 


310 


INDEX 


Arnold,  M.  129,  140,  238 
Arrabiata,  L',  Heyse's  289 
Ars     Poetica,     Horace's     47, 

82  n.,  93,  140,  142,  256,  267 
Art,  see  Nature  and  art. 
ABcham  141,  181 
Asia  50 

Asia  Minor  1,  5 
Athens  4,  5,  7,  9,  11-13,  148, 

184,  217,  224 
Attic  dialect  4 
Aubrey  271,  272 
Augustine  59 
Australia  53 
Austria  258 

Bacchus  (See  also  Dionysus.) 
39 

Bacon  32,  64,  74  n.,  75,  81, 
116,  131,  141,  169,  255 

Bartram,  J.  145  n. 

Bartram,  W.  145,  145  n. 

Bartram 'a  Garden  145,  148, 
158 

Battle  for  good  usage  70,  71 

Baumbach  290 

Beatrice  217 

Bede  59,  60,  259,  266 

Belgium  258 

Beljame  261 

Benedictines  259 

Bentley  204,  205,  259 

Berlin   202 

Berlin,  University  of  197, 
202,  216 

Bible  9,  25,  39,  53,  60,  61, 
63-65,  87.  93.  ]14.  118.  121- 
123,  143,  165,  169-171,  176, 
178,    241,   264,   286,   297 

Biographic  Literaria,  Cole- 
ridge's   34  n. 

Birmingham  50 

Boeckh  172,  202,  203,  205, 
253,  255,  259,  260 

Boethius   265 

Boileau  290 


Boissier    172 

Bookman's  Budget,  Dobson'a 

162  n. 
Bosanquet  192,  193 
Bossuet  290 
Boswell  82  n,,  222 
Bouchardon  111,  111  n. 
Boyer,  33,  33  n.,  37 
Bradshaw  141 
Br&te,  De  la  290 
Bright,  J.  W.  261 
Brougham  222 
Brown,  Carleton  261 
Browning  20,  32 
Brunot  290 
Bunyan  166 
Buommattei  102,  103 
Burgon  249 
Burke    24,    32,    93,    99,    142, 

238,  239,  241 
Burns  74,  143 
Butcher  122,  174 
Byron  50 
Byzantium   259 

Casdmon  170 

Caesar   172,    173  n.,   179 

Cairo,  University  of  136 

Calcutta  54 

Calvin  269,  270,  271,  273,  274, 

277,  281,  288,  291 
Cambridge  32,  62,  164 
Canada  53 

Carnegie  Institution  243,  244 
Catechism  267 
Catiline  173,  176 
Cato  180,  272 
Catullus  33 
Caylus    111  n. 
Channing  163 
Charlemagne  39,  87,  259 
Charles  II  64 
Chatham  32 
Chaucer  20,  24,  32,  55,  58,  62, 

63,  65,  94,  95,  191,  216,  251, 

264-266,  290 


INDEX 


311 


Chicago  University  Press  247 
Chien  du  Capitaine,  Enault's 

290 
Child,  F.  J.  254,  258,  265 
Chilon   152 
China  12 
Choice  of  books  113-115,  118- 

120,  122,  123,  141,  160,  166 
Christ  14,  76,  176,  178,   187, 

275 
Christabel,  Coleridge's  82 n. 
Christianity    10,    12,    14,    58, 

59,  62,  242,  266,  275,  292 
Christ's  Hospital  32,  33,  37 
Church  Fathers  60,  260,  270 
Cicero  10,  11,  24,  32,  33,  50, 

52,  57,  60,  61,  64,  93,  99, 

142,  169,  173  n.,  176,  259 
Clarendon,  Earl  of  248 
Clarendon  Press  (See  also  Ox- 
ford Press.)     241,  247,  248 
Clark  175 
Classical    images    in    modern 

poets  23,  172,  173 
Classical    Mythology    in 

ShaTcespeare,  Koot  's  25  n. 
Cleon  7 

Cleopatra  21,  22 
Coleridge    31-34,    36-38,    49, 

64,  82  n. 
Coleridge,  Life  of,  Gillman's 

82  n. 
College   de   France   136,   137, 

200,  206 
Colloquies,  Alcuin's  220 
Columbia  University  261 
Columella  272 
Comenius  31 
Commentary,  A,  Galsworthy's 

143  n. 
Comus,  Milton's  48,  113 
Concordance  to  Milton,  Brad- 

shaw'a  141 
Confessions,  Eousseau  's  82  n. 
Conington  47 
Contemplation,  see  Theoria.    | 


Convivio,  Dante's  212-214 

Cook  63,  64,  257,  261 

Coriolanus  185 

C  oriola  nus,  Shakespeare  'a 
185,   186 

Cornell  University  74  n.,  223, 
293,  294 

Correction  of  papers  81,  82, 
88-104 

Courses  for  teachers  of  Eng- 
lish 140-144,  294-307 

Cox,  Kenyon  228 

Cram,  R.  A.  263 

*  Creative  '  teachers  228 

Crete  2 

Croiset,  A.  172,  261 

Croiset,  M.  172,  261 

Culture,  unity  of  5,  6,  40,  60, 
259,  298 

Curtis  223 

Cuttle,  Captain  249 

Cynewulf  20,  170,  264 

'  Daily  theme  '  73,  74,  82-85, 

138 
Danish  peninsula  58 
Dante  11,  114,  118,  120,  143, 

165-171,  191,  199,  212-214, 

253,  254,  257,  260,  262 
Dark  Ages,  The,  Grandgent's 

266 
Darmesteter  49,  206,  207 
Davies  161 

Be  Anima,  Aristotle's  149 
Death,  Of,  Bacon's  116 
Defense  of  Poetry,  Shelley's 

93,  142,  256 
Dejection,  Coleridge's  36 
Democracy  49,  51,  52,  72,  74, 

75,  89,  103,  104,  131,  136, 

182,  246 
Democracy  and  Education  131 
Demosthenes    6,    13,    24,    32, 

33    99 
iDeniLark  190,  200,  258,  262 


312 


INDEX 


De  Quincey  169 

'  Deus,'  Jerome's  61,  62 

Dialogues,    Plato's    13,    129, 

146,  157,  161,  220 
Dialogues  of  Plato,  Jowett  's 

129,  161 
Diary,  Allingham  'a  82  n. 
Dictionaries,  use  of   (See  also 

New    English    Dictionary.) 

71,  93,  141 

Dilettante        (sentimentalist) 

190,  204,  253,  254 
Diogenes  7 
Dionysius  185 
Dionysus  5,  23,  39 
Discipline  31,  33,  34,  40,  44, 

72,  268,  270-273,   278,  279, 
281,  282,  284-287,  292,  293 

Discoveries,     Jonson  'a     82  n., 

98,  194,  195 
Distemper  of  learning,  a  75 
Divine  Comedy   122,   165 
Doccnt,  the  German  75 
Doctoral  degree   19,   227-229, 

232,  249-266 
Dombey    and    Son,    Dickens' 

249 
Donatus  60,  61 
Dryden  32 
Dublin  164 
Dutch,  the  192 
Dwight  223 

Earle  143 

Ecclesiastical  History,  Bede's 
60  n. 

Ecclesiastical  Sonnets,  Words- 
worth's 263 

Echo  38 

Eclogues,  Virgil's  143 

Economy  and  parsimony  238, 
239 

Edinburgh  54 

Education,  Of,  ^Milton 's  74  n., 
183,  271,  272,  276,  290,  291 


Education,  Two  Views  of  267- 

293 
Effect  of  literature  108-112, 

115,  124,  125 
Egypt  1 
Eight-eenth-century  usage  65- 

68 
Eliot,  C.  W.  163,  280 
Eliot,  George  39,  94,  142 
Elizabeth,  Queen  63,  64,  141 
Emerson   118,   169 
Emile,    Kousseau's    163,    275, 
,275n.,  278,  284 
E'nault  290 
EncyTclopddie,    Boeckh's    172, 

255 
Engineer,     influence     of     the 

105-108 
Engineers,  Literature  for  105- 

127 
England    11,   34,    53,    58,    60, 

63,    66,    68,    127,    230,    231, 

234,  244,  245,  257-261 
English  and  the  classics  20-46 
English  Channel  58 
Enoch   214 
Epicurus  163 
Eratosthenes  11 
Erlangen  198,  203 
Euclid  11 
Euripides    7,    8,    13,   56,    160, 

161 
Evenus  132,  135-137 
Everyman's  Library  120 
Excursion,  "Wordsworth's  51 
Eye    of    the    State   188,    189, 

192 

Faith  is  imagination  214,  218 
Falconer  66 

Fathers,  Church  60,  260,  270 
Fichte  197-200,  202-204,  210, 

211 
Fielding  142 


INDEX 


313 


First  Year  of  Greek,  Allen's 

175 
Flaubert  82  n. 
Flexner  129,  140,  163,  174 
Florence  102 
Foerster   249,   250,   252,   254, 

257 
Forever,  Calverley's  67,  68 
France  5,  153,  170,  190,  209, 

225,  226,  230,  234,  255,  260, 

261 
Franklin  100,  141 
Franklin 's      Auto  biography 

100,  101 
Freeman  263 
Frisians  62 
Fritz  auf  Ferien,  Arnold's 

290 
Frogs,  Aristophanes'  8 
Function    of    the    Leader    in 

Scholarship  182-218 
Funk  71 
Furnivall  261 

Gallic  War,  Ca?sar's  173 

Galsworthy  142,  143 

Game  175 

Genesis,  Book  of  270 

Geneva  269,  273 

'  Gentleman  '  10 

German  Ocean  58 

'German'  scholarship  75,  209, 
244,  252,  258-262,  295 

German  Universities,  Paul- 
sen's 219 

Germany  153,  209,  226,  230, 
234,  244,  245,  258-261 

Germelshausen,  Gerstacker's 
289 

Gerstiicker  289 

Ghosts,  Ibsen's  128 

Gildersleeve  205,  206,  257 

Gillman  82  n. 

Goethe  11,  142,  164,  168,  169, 
191,  289 


Goodell  175 

Good  usage  47-72,   130 

Gower  63 

Graduate  study  19,  138,  216, 
217,  227-229,  231,  232,  249- 
266 

Grammar  35,  174,  176,  178- 
181,  205,  217,   287-290 

Gray  32,  48,  55,  66 

Greece  4-6,  12,  14,  23-25,  39, 
58,  143,  152,  170,  217,  246, 
263,  288 

Greek  Culture  1-14 

Greek  Exercises,  Hunting- 
ford's  32 

Greek,  how  to  begin  179-181 

Greek  in  English,  The,  Good- 
ell's  175 

Greek,  limitations  of  the  9, 
37,  168 

Greek  Reader,  a  new  175,  178, 
181 

Greek  Romances  14,  142 

Greek,  study  of  17-19,  26,  27, 
30,  35-46,  54,  59,  72,  93, 
106,  131,  143,  144,  159,  171- 
175,  178,  179,  271-273,  278, 
279,  288,  290,  291,  294,  295 

Green,  J.  R.  82,  254  n. 

Gregory,  Pope  59,  60 
Grinim,  J.  255,  263 
Grimm,  W,  263 

Eabichtsfraulein,  Baumbaeh  'a 

290 
Hadrian  11 
HaMvy  290 
Hall  143 
Hamlet  117,  118 
"  Happiness,  Hilty's  224 
Harrison  83,  114 
Harvard  Studies  and  Notes  in 

Philolog'if,     and     Literature 

261 
Harvard  University  73,  257 


314 


INDEX 


Hastings,  battle  of  125 

Hebrews,  the  10,  13,  14,  215, 
235 

Hebrews,  Epistle  to  the  214 

Heina  289 

Bellas,  Shelley's  12  n. 

Hellas  and  Hesperta,  Gilder- 
sleeve's  205,  206 

Hellenic  stocks  4 

Hellenistic  age,  the  2,  11,  14 

Herbart  31 

Hercules  61 

Herford  261 

H^ricault,  d'   262  n.,   263  n. 

Herodotus  6,  13,  178 

Heyse  289 

Hilty  222,  224 

Hippocrates  217 

History  of  Britain,  Milton's 
254 

History  of  Christ's  Hospital, 
Trollope's  33 

History  of  Muscovia,  Milton's 
254 

Hobbes  185 

Hodson  180 

Hoffmann  202 

Holland  258 

Homer  2-5.  9,  10,  13,  16,  24, 
32  33,  38.  39,  52,  60,  86  n., 
Ill,  114,  118,  119,  122,  123, 
133,  143,  154,  157,  170, 
178-181,  292 

Homer     and     the     Study     of 

GreeTc,  Lang's  179-181 
Horace  11,  32,  33.  47,  49,  54, 
57,67,  80,  81,  82n.,  93.  126, 
140,  142,  184,  209,  243,  256, 
267,  268.  291 
Horton,  Milton  at  164 
Humanities  22,  27,  156,  201, 
216,  240,  241,  244,  246,  250- 
254,  257-259,  266 
Humboldt,  W.  von  200 
Humility  of  the  scholar  210- 
213,   254 


Huntingford  32 
Hyde,  Edward,  Earl  of  Clar- 
endon 248 
Hyperion,  Longfellow's  191 

Ibsen  128,  227 

Ictinus  6 

Ideas,  treasuries  of  162-171 

Idylls  of  the  King,  Tenny- 
son's 263 

Idyls,  Theocritus'  143 

Iliad  2,  3,  52,  86  n.,  110,  111, 
122,  180,  299 

Iliad,  Pope's  111  n. 

Ilissus   145,   146 

Illinois  166 

Immensee,  Storm's  289 

India,  53 

Insight  and  expression  78-80, 
85-92,  130,  190,  193,  194 

Instauratio  Magna,  Bacon 's 
81 

Intimations  of  Immortality, 
Wordsworth's  158 

Ireland  11,  259 

Italy  5,  23,  217,  234,  25S- 
260 

James,  King  63,  64 

Japan  12 

Jena  203 

Jerome  52,  60-62 

Jerome's  '  Deus  '  61 

Jespersen  262 

Jews  10.  13,  14,  215,  235 

Job,  Book  of  123 

John  of  Salisbury  187,  188 

Johns  Hopkins  XJniversity  257 

Johnson,  Samuel  32,  64,  82  n., 
222 

Jonson,  Ben  69.  81,  82  n.,  98, 
143,  194,  195 

Journals  of  Dorothy  Words- 
worth 82  n. 

Jowett  46,  129,  157,  161,  172, 
296 


INDEX 


315 


Judd  44 

Jukes  family  104 
Jupiter  61 
Justus  59 
Jutes  58,  62 
Juvenal  32,  33 

Kallikaks,  the  104 

Kaluza  262 

Kansas  166 

Kant  199 

Keats  66,  68,  147,  243 

Kelsey  44 

Ker  261 

King  Lear  110,  113 

Kipling  53,  55,  75,  108,  184, 

217,  264,  265 
Kittredge  257 

Konigsberg,  University  of  262 
Kuhla  Khan,  Coleridge's  49 

Laboulaye  206 

La  Bruy&re  143 

'  Lady  '  10,  199 

Lamb  82  n. 

Lamh,  Life  of,  Lucas'  82 n. 

Lamentations,  Book  of  61 

Lang  110,  122,  174,  179-181, 
195,  196,  296 

Langland  63,  264 

Languet  100 

Latin  and  Greeh  in  American 
Education,  Kelsey 's  44 

Latin  Reader,  a  new  175-178, 
181 

Latin,  study  of  35-46,  54,  59, 
62-64,  68-70,  72,  87,  93, 
106,  143,  144,  171-179,  254, 
271-273,  278,  279,  288,  290, 
291,  294 
Law,  William  143 
Leader  in  scholarship  182-218, 

253-262,  265,  266 
Leaders,   training   of    19,   58, 
69,  102-104,  140-144,  155- 
157,  189-218,  234,  235 


Leaf  110,  122,  296 
Leah  217 
Leander  290 

Lectures,     teaching    by     129, 
139,  154^155,  219-226,  278 
Leibnitz  169 
Leisure  9,  108,  124,  127,  188, 

189,  199,  203,  212 
Lessing  289 
Letter     to     a     Nohle     Lord, 

Burke's  238,  239 
Letters    of    the    Wordsworth 

Family  82  n. 
Leviathan,  Hobbes'  185 
'  Liberal  '    studies    109,    112, 

125-127,  250 
Libraries,  use  of  123,  124 
Life   of   Coleridge,   Gillman's 

82  n. 
Lincoln  70,  115,  166 
Lines  left  upon  a  Seat  in  a 
Yew-tree,  Wordsworth's  211 
Literature  for  Engineers  10b- 

127 
Literary  types  13,  142,  143 
Littr6  255 
Livy  32,  185 
Logos,  the  14 
Loisy  16 
London  50,  62 
London,  1802,   Wordsworth's 

127 
Longfellow  184,  191,  258,  263 
Longinus  On  the  Sublime  33, 

142,  256 
Longus  14 
Lonsdale,  Lord  222 
Lord's  Prayer  66,  286 
Lost   Chord,  A,  Procter's  38 
Lounsbury    51 
Lowell  223 
Lubbock  114 
Lueian  12 
Lucretius  33 
Lycidas,   Milton's   143 
Lysias  160 
Lytton  162 


316 


INDEX 


Macaulay  2 
Madvig  200 
Making  of  England,  Green's 

82 
Malot  290 
Manly  261 
Manzoni  81,  82 
March,  F.  A.  258 
Margites,  Homeric  154 
Mark  Antony  21 
Martha  217 
Masson,  F.   209 
Mediterranean    civilization    1, 
2,   4,   13,   14,   59,   143,   167, 
171,   182,   216,   263 
Melbourne  54 
Mellitua  59 
Memoir     of     W.     Y.     Sella/r, 

Lang 'a  196 
Menander  13,  56 
Meni^ndez  y  Pelayo  258 
Menenius   Agrippa   185,    186 
Metamorphoses,  Ovid 's  38,  173 
Metaphysica,  Aristotle's 

212  n. 
Methods    and    Aims    in    the 
Study  of  Literature,  Coop- 
er's 34  n.,  82  n.,  250 
Metres,  Seale's  33 
Midas  136 

Middle  Ages  10.  12,  62,  63, 
131,  157,  165,  166,  168,  182, 
183,  187,  189,  199,  201, 
202  n.,  212,  219,  220,  234, 
251,  252,  259,  262-266 
Middle  West  43,  73,  172 
Migne  255 

Milton  20,  24,  31,  32,  34,  39, 
48,  49,  57,  58,  65,  70,  74, 
85,  94,  95,  102,  103,  106, 
108,  113-118,  120,  123,  126, 
127,  141-143,  164,  168-171, 
173,  183,  191,  230,  241,  254, 
257,  262,  264,  265,  271,  272, 
276,  290-293 


Models,  use  of  84,  92,  99-101, 
261 

Moland  262  n.,  263  n. 

Molifere  290 

Monk,  J.  H.  204,  205 

Monks,  Benedictine  259 

Monks  and  Schoolmen,  Words- 
worth's 202  n. 

Mon  Oncle  et  mon  Cure,  De  la 
Brute's  290 

Montaigne  168,  169 

Montalembert  263 

Moralia,  Gregory's  60 

Morley  83,  84,  296 

Moses,  the  Greek  10 

Mozart  12 

Murray,  J.  A.  H.  48,  53,  71 

Murray,  Gilbert  160,  161 

Mycenae  2 

Myers  110,  122,  296 

Napoleon   202 

Narcissus  38 

Nation,  New  York  249,  250 

Nature  and  art  57,  58,  65,  67, 

69-71,  93,  280,  281 
New  and  Old,  Things  162-182 
New  England  43,  74 
New  England  Primer  270 
New    English    Dictionary    48, 

53,  57,  65,  70,  141,  244 
New   Essays   towards   a   Crit- 
ical    Method,     Eobertson's 

159  n. 
Newman  24,  32,  82  n.,  94,  99, 

238 
New    Testament    13,    16,    40, 

134,  163,  164,  168,  170,  178, 

212.  268,  292 
New  York  City  50 
New  York  State  166 
Nicomachean  Ethics  7,  17,  46, 

277 
Normans  125 
North  Sea  58 


INDEX 


317 


North 's  Plutarch  22,  278 

Norton  223,  258 

Norway  258 

Notre-Dame  de  Chartres  199 

Numbers   96,    154,    207,    213, 

225,  233-239 
Numbers,   Arnold's   essay   on 

238 

Ocean,  Young 's  34  n. 
Odyssey    2,    3,    37,    52,    86  n., 

llln.,  122,  142,  173  n.,  174, 

180,  283,  287,  295,  297,  299 
CEdipus  8 
(Edipus    Bex,    Sophocles'    9, 

295 
Old    English    58-60,    93,    170, 

251,  254  n.,  264,  265 
Old    Testament    24,    60,    130, 

170,  212,  268 
On    his    Blindness,    Milton's 

126,  127 
*  Oral  English  '  76-78,  84,  89, 

90,  92,  97,  107,  115-117 
Orb-weaving  spider  145,  146, 

152,  153,  158 
Orchomenos  2 
Organic  comparison,  the  184- 

188,  197,  213,  214,  216,  217 
Organisation  der  wissenscliaft- 

liehen    Arbeit,    Usener  'a 

253  n. 
Organization     of     scholarship 

197,  200,  201,  254-256,  259, 

260 
Original    goodness    274,    275, 

280-282 
Original  sin  269-282 
Orthodoxy,  tolerating  28 
Osier   164 
Othello  110 
Our   Debt   to   Antiquity,   Zie- 

linski's  27,  46,  46  n. 
Outlook,  The  277,  290 
Overbury  143 


Ovid  24,  25,  33,  38,  173,  176 
Oxford  54,  62,  65,  241^  248 
Oxford  Press   (See  also  Clar- 
endon Press.)    239 

Palestine  217,  263 

Pangs  of  authorship  81,  82 

Paradise   Lost    37,    110,    115, 

116 
Paraphrasing,    value    of    99- 

101,  141 
Paris  200 
Paris,    Gaston    206-210,    253, 

260 
Parsimony  and  economy  238, 

239 
Parthenon  9,  14,  199 
Pascal  290 
Patterns  145-161 
Paul    the    apostle    8,    10,    56, 

186,  187,  224 
Paulinus  59 
Paulsen  219 
Pearl,  The  63,  264 
Pedagogy  31,  291 
Pedant,  the  190,  204,  253 
Pericles  2,  4,  7,  52,  76 
Peripatetics  220 
Persia  50 
Personal    Talk,   Wordsworth's 

74  n.,  77 
Peter  215 

Petrarch  170,  171,  253 
Phoedrus,  Plato's  76,  146,  147, 

157-160,  184 
Phi  Beta  Kappa   15,   16,   27, 

28,  235 
Phidias  6 

PMlebus,  Plato's  159 
Phillips,   Edward   271 
Phillips,  John  271 
Philosophia   15,    22,    25,    100, 

254,  255 
Pieciola,  Saintine's  290 
Pillsbury  44 


318 


INDEX 


Pindar  6,  13 

Place  of  Leisure  in  Life,  Bo- 
sanquet's  192,  193 

Plato  6,  10,  13,  16,  31,  46, 
56,  57,  76,  77.  81.  118,  125, 
129,  140,  142,  145-148,  152, 
157-162,  164r-166,  168-173, 
178,  179,  183,  184,  189,  199, 
200,  220,  233,  253,  256,  257, 
259,  277,  278.  288,  291,  299 

Plutarch  7,  12,  21,  22,  16i>, 
185,  277,  278 

Poetics,  Aristotle's  4,  93,  126, 
142,  172,  253,  254,  256 

Poets  as  students  31-44,  94, 
191,  212-214,  254,  257,  262 

Politics,  Aristotle's  46 

Polygnotus  6 

Pope  32,  65,  111  n. 

Prceterita,   Kuskin  's   86,   86  n. 

Praxiteles  6 

Prayer  Book,  English  241 

Prelude,  Wordsworth 's  200, 
214 

Press,  an  endowed  239-248 

Princeton  University  269 

Priscian  61 

Procter  38 

Prodieus  132,  134,  135 

Protagoras  132-134 

Proverbs,  Book  of  215 

Province  of  Enqlish  Philology, 
The,  Cook's  266 

Prussia  197 

Psalms,  the  9,  14,  32,  61,  170 

Ptolemies,  the  246 

'  Puc-Puggy  '  145 

Quiller-Couch  265 
Quintilian  10,  81,  93,  94,  142, 
183 

Eabelais  181 
Eaehel  217 
Eacine   290 
Eajna,  Pio  258 


Eaphael  12 

Eeading    aloud    115-118,    120 

Eeading,  habit  of  108,  121, 
174 

Eeading  in  the  home  121,  122 

Reason  of  Church  Govern- 
ment, Milton's  293 

Eecruiting  faculties,  methods 
of  226-233 

Reminiscences,  Gold- 
win  Smith's  26.  133 

Eenaissance  11,  165-169,  182, 
234,  246,  247,  251,  259,  262, 
264 

Eenan  163,  206,  207 

Republic,  Plato's  10,  46,  81, 
125,  157,  161,  162,  277 

Review  of  Reviews  277,  290 

Revolt  of  Islam,  Shelley's  23 

Revue  Critique  210 

Revue  Politique  et  LittSraire 
82  n. 

Eewards  of  the  teacher  102, 
103,  130,  133.  139,  140, 
154-156,  189-192,  214,  215, 
223,  225,  239,  240,  243,  245, 
246 

Ehetorie  4,  130,  147,  149,  254 

Rhetoric,  Aristotle's  143,  149, 
150 

Eichardson  142 

Eights  and  duties  88,  89,  182, 
183 

Eights  and  duties  of  the  pupil 
95-99 

Eights  and  duties  of  the  State 
7.  102-104,  188-190,  194 

Eights  and  duties  of  the 
teacher  94,  95 

Road  Song  of  the  Bandar-log, 
Kipling's  55,  75 

Eobertson  159 

Eohde  255 

Eoland,   Song  of   125 

Eolle  63 

Eoman  Missionaries  59-61,  68 


INDEX 


319 


Rome  11,  12,  14,  23,  24,  25, 

39,  52,  58,  59,  61,  143,  170, 

186,  263,  289 
Jtomola,  Eliot's  39 
Rossetti  51 
Root  25 
Rousseau   22,    31,    82  n.,    163, 

168,  269,  273,  274,  276-278, 

281,  284,  288,  291 
Routh   249 
Rufinianus  59 
Runic  alphabet  58 
Ruskin  32,   86,   99,   141,   169, 

263 
Russia   258 
Russians  235 
Buth,  Wordsworth's  23 

Sainte-Beuve  169,  208 

St.    Andrews,    University    of 

195 
Saintine  290 
Salaries,  see  Rewards  of  the 

teacher. 
Samos  6 

Samson  Agonistes  113,  115 
San  Francisco   50 
Sans  Famille,  Malot's  290 
Saracens  259 
Saxons  58,  62 
Scandinavia  258 
Schiller  289 

Schleiermacher  200,  202 
Scholarship     and     Humanism 

249  n. 
Scholarship    and    publication 

196,  230,  232,  233.  239-248 
Scholarship,    improvement    of 

209,  210,  212-217,  219-248, 

257-262 
School,  see  Leisure. 
Schoolmaster,   Ascham's  141 
Schopenhauer  118 
Schuylkill  River  145 
Scipio,  Dream  of  176 
Scotland  269 


Scott  49 

Scale  33 

Self-denial  17,  281,  288,  292 

Self-improvement  106 

Self -protection    in   reading 

113-114 
Sellar   195,  196 
Seneca  13 

*  Senior  Grecians  '  32,  33 
Septuagint  178 
Sequence  91,  160 
Serious  Call,  Law's  143 
Shakespeare  3,  9,  20,  21,  22,  25, 
28,   32,   34,   37,   58,   63,   65, 
69,  70.  94.  95,  106-108, 113- 
118,  120,  122,  142,  164,  168- 
170,  172,  173,  187,  191,  230, 
262,  262  n.,  263  n.,  265,  290 
Shedd  258 
Shelley  11-13,  23,  66,  93,  142, 

158,  159,  171,  173,  256 
Shorey  111  n. 
Shy  lock  192 
Sichel  38 
Sicily  5,  258 
Sidney  93,  100,  141,  256 
'  Simplified  spelling  '   53,  54, 

57 
Skeat  265 
SlcylarTc,  To  a,  Shelley's  158- 

160 
Slang  55,  56 

Smith,  Goldwin  26,  133,  223 
Socrates  6,   76,   81,   125,  129, 
134,  135,  140,  146,  159,  160, 
184,  185,  209,  220 
Solon  203 
Some  Suggestions  ah  out  Bad 

Poetry,  Sichel 's  38,  38  n. 
Sophists,  ancient  and  modern 

128-138,  142 
Sophocles  6-9,  13,  16,  37,  126, 

168,  184,  295,  299 
South,  the  43 
South  Africa  53 
Spectator,  The  100,  101,  143 


320 


INDEX 


Speech  on  Conciliatiojv, 

Burke's  99 
Spenser  20,  31,  32,  55,  58,  65, 

95,  191,  243,  262,  265,  290 
Stoics  10,  163 
Storm,  T.  289 
Strindberg  227 
Stubba  263 
Studies    in    Literature,    Mor- 

ley's  84,  297 
Studies,  Of,  Bacon's  131 
Studies    of    poets    31-44,    94, 

191,  212-214,  254,  262 
Sublime,    On    the,    see    Long- 

inus. 
Sublime    and    Beautiful,    On 

the,  Burke's  142 
Sweden  258 
Swift   55,   83,   164 
Switzerland  258,  269 
Symposium,  Plato's  140 
Symposium,  Xenophon  's  86  n. 
Syracuse  5 
Syria  2,  11,  259 

I' 
Tacitus  32,  64  f 

Talleyrand  79 

Tatler,  The  143 

Teacher  and  Student  128-144 

Teacher  (of  English,  etc.)  20, 

21,  69,  80,  91-97,  104.  121. 

137,  138,  140-144,  149,  153, 

154,  159,  160,  171-173,  194, 

196,  197,  215,  221-223,  227, 

235,   249-266,   289,   290 
Teaching  and  study  191,  194, 

195,  197,  198,  203,  216,  217, 

229-231,  233 
Teaching  by  lectures  129,  139, 

219-226,  278 
Teaching    of    composition    26, 

30-32,  35.  37-39,  57,  64,  72- 

104,  149,  177 
Tempest,  Shakespeare's  113 
Temple  Classics  120 


Temple  Primers  120 
Ten  Brink  253,  260,  265 
Tennyson  20,  32,  48,  49,  108, 

143,   263-265 
Terence  33 
Thackeray  142 
Thecetetus,  Plato's  159 
Theocritus  13,  33.  143 
Theophrastus  11,  13,  142,  143 
Theophrastus     Such,     Eliot 's 

142 
Theoria     (contemplation)      b, 

157,  183,  190-193,  200,  212- 

215,  217,  218 
Thrace  1 
Thucydides  6,  13 
Tindalo  55 

Tito   Melema,   Eliot's  39 
Toledo  259 
Tour  de  la  France,  Brunei's 

290 
Tours  259 
Training   of   teachers   75,   94, 

103,  104,  121,  153,  155,  159, 

172,   255 
Translations    t)f    the    classics 

18.   46,   122,   144.   160,   161, 

177.   178.   294-307 
Trdumereien,   Leander  's   290 
Troad  2 

Troilus   and   Cressida,   Shake- 
speare's 28,  29 
Trollope,  W.  33 
Typesetters,    influence   of    53, 

54 
Tyrwhitt  265 

Ulysses  283 

Ulysses,  Shakespeare's  28 
Unified  scholars  207,  208,  209 
Unity  of  culture  5,  6,  60,  259, 

298 
University  of  Berlin  197,  202, 

216 
University  of  Konigsberg  262 
University  of  St.  Andrews  195 


INDEX 


321 


Usage,  Good  47-72 
Usener  253  n. 

Valparaiso,  University  of  136 
Varro  272 
Vaughan  161 
Verifying  references  249 
Virgil  10,  11,  24,  25,  32,  33, 

38,    39,    52,    60,    143,    176, 

177,  191,  262,  292 
Virgil   in    the    Middle   Ages, 

Comparetti's  87 
Vita  Nuova,  Dante's  165 
Vulgate  Bible  53,  61-63,  68, 

176,  177 

Wagnalls  71 
Warton  111  n. 

Ways  and  Means  of  Improv- 
ing Scholarship  219-248 
Webster  71 
Welldon  46 
Wesley,  Charles  284 
Wesley,  John  284.  287  n. 
Wesley,  Kezzy  287.  287  n. 
Wesley,   Susanna  284-287 


Wilhelm  Meister,  Goethe 's  142 

William  III  of  Prussia  202 

William  the  Conqueror  125 

Wickham  47 

Woolsey  201 

Wordsworth  20,  23,  32,  48,  54, 
55,  57,  58,  63,  65,  74  n., 
82  n.,  127,  141-143,  200, 
202,  211,  214,  222,  223,  250, 
263-265 

World's  Classics  120 

Wyclif  62,  63,  264 

Xenophon  32,  86  n.,  125,  157, 
172,  173,  173  n.,  174,  178, 
179,  180 

Yale  Studies  in  English  261 
Yale  University  201,  257 
Yale  University  Press  247 
York  259 

Young,  Edvrard  34  n. 
Youth,  character  of   149-154, 
157,  159 

Zielinski  26,  46 


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